Finance expert Aswath Damodaran values AI firm Anthropic at $1.475 trillion ahead of IPO

Valuation expert Aswath Damodaran has estimated that Anthropic, the maker of Claude artificial intelligence models, is worth $1.475 trillion. This figure sits below the lower end of the widely discussed $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion range for its upcoming initial public offering.

Valuation Scenarios

Damodaran outlined three distinct outcomes depending on revenue growth, computing costs, and regulatory pressures. In his base case, equity value reaches $1.475 trillion. Under a worst-case scenario, revenue hits just $200 billion by 2036 and computing remains expensive, leading to a negative equity value of $373 billion where the firm does not survive. In a best-case scenario, revenue climbs to $1.5 trillion by 2036 with higher margins, pushing the equity value to $4.04 trillion.

Market Factors

Anthropic reported that revenue in the first two quarters of 2026 reached about 14 times the level from the same period last year. Growth slowed in the third quarter of 2026 as competitor OpenAI gained market share, computing capacity stayed tight, and some businesses moved to cheaper open-source models. Damodaran noted that Anthropic holds a BB+ bond rating and carries future computing commitments running into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Context

Initial public offerings allow private companies to sell shares to the public for the first time to raise capital. Valuing early-stage technology firms often involves predicting market size and growth over many years, which can lead to wide differences in estimated worth.