Karla Barker 
Anthropic has been hard to ignore lately. Its Claude Opus 5 model now sits at the top of AI intelligence rankings, and industry tracking cited in recent reporting suggests the company accounts for about 65 percent of all AI spending. That combination is rare. It also raises a big question: can the company justify a valuation near $2 trillion?
Top ranking and spending lead
Claude Opus 5 sits ahead of rival systems like Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol in the ranking data. The position matters because enterprise buyers lean on model rankings when choosing where to send their compute budgets. Anthropic also gets credit for cost-effectiveness, which helps explain why customers keep picking it even when cheaper options exist.
The spending figure is just as striking. Controlling roughly 65 percent of AI spending means Anthropic is not just winning pilot projects. Customers are committing real budget. That kind of concentration is unusual, even in a sector that tends to favor winners.
Money, valuation, and timing
The company closed a $65 billion Series H round that set its post-money valuation at $965 billion. Fortune reports that some investors now expect an IPO as early as October, with a target valuation of $2 trillion or higher. Anthropic filed confidentially with the SEC in June, but no public timeline has been set.
A $2 trillion valuation would be a huge jump. Fortune notes that Nasdaq 100 companies trade at roughly 34 times trailing earnings and 25 times forward earnings. To match that group, Anthropic would need annual profits somewhere between $59 billion and $79 billion. That seems steep for a company that was only expected to post its first operating profit in the second quarter of 2026. Revenue is growing fast, though. Run-rate revenue reportedly jumped from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to an estimated $47 billion by mid-May. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has shared outside data that puts the figure closer to $74.1 billion, ahead of OpenAI’s estimated run rate. Neither company has confirmed those numbers.
What could push the number higher
Speculation already points to a valuation of $1.25 trillion by the end of 2026, still short of the reported IPO target. Whether Anthropic can reach $2 trillion depends on turning its top ranking and spending lead into real bottom-line profit. Compute access is another deciding factor. Anthropic has locked in deals with Amazon, Google, and Broadcom, plus GPU access through SpaceX. Bloomberg has reported that Anthropic is in talks to buy AI startup Decart AI for $6 billion, which some see as a pre-IPO move to strengthen its financials.
If Anthropic goes public before OpenAI, which reportedly may wait until 2027, it will set the benchmark for how the industry gets valued. That alone makes the next few months worth watching.