Anthropic Valuation Rumored to Surpass $2 Trillion? Is AI Investment Sliding into a Bubble? The Debate Heats Up Again
- Core Thesis: AI company Anthropic could go public as early as October, with an expected valuation exceeding $2 trillion, potentially making it the largest IPO in history. Its surging revenue has led bulls to believe that AI commercialization is materializing. However, gross margin improvements have been driven primarily by declining inference costs rather than pricing power. Combined with valuation overreach and liquidity siphoning concerns, the debate over an AI bubble has once again intensified.
- Key Elements:
- Anthropic generated $11.5 billion in revenue in Q2 alone, a 1,361% year-over-year increase. Gross margins in its inference business jumped from 38% to over 70%, crossing a key profitability threshold.
- The gross margin surge stems from the adoption of Google TPUs and Broadcom custom chips in inference workloads, not from improved pricing power. Nvidia's inference revenue growth in its August 26 earnings report will serve as a critical observation window.
- A $2 trillion valuation corresponds to 2028 revenue expectations. If revenue growth decelerates from tenfold to one-to-twofold, the current valuation framework would lose its support.
- The largest IPO in history, followed by OpenAI's expected listing, would drain massive liquidity from secondary markets, fueling concerns over a capital siphoning effect.
- Bank of America recommends simultaneously going long on leading AI tech stocks and oversold assets while shorting AI bonds to capture returns in the late-stage bubble. The bank's Bull & Bear indicator stands at 9.3, still in extreme bullish territory, yet tech stocks have already seen their largest weekly outflows in seven weeks.
The U.S. stock market is about to witness another historic moment.
According to media reports and secondary market rumors, AI company Anthropic could officially go public as soon as October, with market expectations valuing the company at over $2 trillion (this figure has not yet been officially confirmed by the company; please refer to the formal prospectus for details). If this number materializes, it would set a record for the largest IPO in global history—surpassing even SpaceX's previous listing milestone.
A company valued at approximately $965 billion during its May 2026 funding round has been propelled to its current heights by secondary market trading prices, driven by the rapid growth of its Claude model series. And before this IPO has even landed, an old question has already been reignited: Has the AI investment boom already charged into bubble territory?
1. Bulls Do Hold a Strong Hand
First, let's look at where the supporters' confidence comes from—Anthropic's just-disclosed Q2 operating data is impressively strong, exceeding expectations.
According to operating figures circulating in the market (not yet officially disclosed by the company; please refer to the prospectus or official financial reports for details), Anthropic generated $11.5 billion in quarterly revenue, compared to just $787 million in the same period last year—a year-over-year increase of 1,361%. In Q1 of this year, revenue stood at $4.7 billion, meaning it doubled within three months. The company has also crossed a profitability watershed: it has started making money, with inference business gross margins jumping from 38% a year ago to over 70%.
The criticism that "AI companies only burn cash without generating returns" looks weak in the face of these numbers. The bulls' narrative therefore follows logically: The high valuation is paying for the speed at which AI commercialization is materializing and for the long, snowballing runway of large model adoption in the enterprise market.
2. But the Quality of Those Gross Margins Deserves Scrutiny
Why have profit margins surged so quickly? Breaking down the cost structure, the answer doesn't lie with Anthropic itself, but in its chip supplier list: Google TPUs and Broadcom's custom silicon.
The current compute landscape is this—in the training phase, Nvidia's dominance remains unshaken. But spending on the inference phase is continuously shifting toward custom chips, and the larger the business scale, the faster that shift accelerates. Anthropic's gross margin leap largely benefits from declining inference costs, rather than improved pricing power.
This directly impacts an upcoming observation window: Nvidia's earnings report on August 26, where the revenue growth of its inference business will serve as the most direct gauge for measuring the progress of this "inference migration."
3. The Bears' Hand: Valuation Overextension and Liquidity Drain
Now let's look at what the skeptics are worried about.
First is the pricing methodology. A $2 trillion valuation corresponds to revenue expectations for 2028—today's price tag is attached to a report card two years out. This kind of pricing places近乎苛刻 demands on growth: if revenue growth slides from tenfold year-over-year to merely doubling or tripling, the current valuation framework would lose its support.
Second is liquidity. The largest IPO in history means siphoning hundreds of billions of dollars out of the secondary market in one go. More troublesome still, OpenAI is queued up behind them. By the time Anthropic officially rings the bell, there may simply not be enough money to go around in the market.
So there are two things worth watching: the growth rate of inference revenue in Nvidia's earnings report, and whether the revenue figures disclosed in Anthropic's formal prospectus align with the data circulating in the secondary market—when the numbers don't match up, it's often a signal that the story is starting to sour.
4. Bulls and Bears at a Stalemate? Bank of America Offers a "Hedged Bet" Approach
Whether AI has entered bubble territory is a point of contention between bulls and bears. According to publicly reported market information, Michael Hartnett, Chief Investment Strategist at BofA Securities, proposed in his latest research report that investors need not pick sides between bulls and bears, but could consider allocating to both asset classes simultaneously (for specific strategy details, please refer to the original BofA research report; this article's summary may involve some loss of information).
His recommendation is to simultaneously go long on AI tech leaders and forgotten, underperforming assets that the market has neglected for years, capturing returns from both sides during the final blow-off phase of the nominal GDP bubble, while shorting AI-related bonds.
This assessment is backed by a set of data. The BofA Bull & Bear Indicator has fallen from 9.7 to 9.3, still remaining in extreme bullish territory, and the "sell" signal has not been lifted—yet since the signal flashed in May, global equities have actually continued to climb higher. Capital flows are also diverging: gold and commodities continue to see structural inflows, tech stocks just experienced their largest weekly outflow in seven weeks, and private clients' equity positioning has risen to historical peaks.
Hartnett cites historical bubble patterns, pointing out that as the dominant bubble nears its top, emerging markets or oversold cyclical assets often benefit from spillover effects—this time, the consumer sector is the most likely candidate to take the baton. The rationale for shorting AI bonds is equally clear: with over $1 trillion in AI capital expenditure paired with negative cash flows, a flood of related corporate bond issuance is on the horizon, and with supply pressure looming, prices are unlikely to improve.
The core of this strategy can be summed up in one sentence: In the most frenzied final stretch of a bubble, returns are often the most generous—but beware, you can't have all your chips on one side of the table.
Important Notice: BIT Securities' business operates through its group company BIT (formerly Matrixport)'s subsidiary Matrix Gelephu Pte. Ltd., regulated by the Gelephu Financial Services Office (GFSO) of Bhutan, providing eligible clients with access to U.S. stock trading services, with relevant transactions executed and cleared through U.S. registered broker-dealers. This article was written and provided by an external contributing author. The Anthropic valuation, financial data, and listing timeline described herein are compiled from public reports and market rumors, have not been officially confirmed, and are subject to the company's formal disclosures. The views, analyses, and judgments expressed in this article represent the author's personal opinions and do not represent the official position of BIT or BIT Research. BIT also makes no warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the relevant content. The third-party institutional views cited herein (including those of the BofA Securities strategist) represent only their own or the analyst's personal opinions, do not represent BIT's position, and their accuracy is not guaranteed. This article does not constitute investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation of an offer. Valuations of unlisted companies and AI-related assets are highly volatile, and historical growth rates do not represent future performance. Investors should make independent judgments and consult professional advice.
