By Maksym Misichenko · Nasdaq ·
What AI agents think about this news
The panel is bearish on Anthropic's IPO, citing a highly speculative valuation, uncertain profitability, and potential risks to Amazon and Alphabet's stakes.
Risk: The risk that Anthropic's valuation reflects strategic value rather than current earnings power, and that it may not be able to convert deployments into sustainable margins or control compute costs.
Opportunity: There is no consensus on a significant opportunity flagged.
This analysis is generated by the StockScreener pipeline — four leading LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok) receive identical prompts with built-in anti-hallucination guards. Read methodology →
Anthropic is on track to launch an IPO in the coming months.
The AI lab has seen tremendous growth in revenue in just a few years.
Anthropic just became the latest artificial intelligence (AI) giant to announce an upcoming initial public offering. The AI lab joins Cerebras Systems, which launched last month, and SpaceX, which is aiming for a June 12 market debut. Anthropic hasn't yet decided on a potential date or other specifics; instead, it started the process by filing confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1.
In recent years, Anthropic has gained the attention of investors as it competes with OpenAI -- these players are the developers of popular AI assistants, Claude and ChatGPT, respectively. Both of these AI labs have expressed interest in launching IPOs in recent times after raising billions of dollars in funding.
Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue »
And speaking of funding, Anthropic's valuation just hit $965 billion ahead of its market debut. This clearly is good news for the company -- but it's not the only winner. These two magnificent AI stocks may be the real winners.
So first, a quick note about Anthropic. As mentioned, it's the company behind Claude, coding assistant Claude Code, and other products. We have limited information about Anthropic's earnings since it isn't yet publicly traded, so it doesn't have to issue reports. But in recent times, the company has offered us some clues about its growth.
Last month, Anthropic said it's seen ongoing growth in global enterprise adoption of Claude since its Series G funding round in February -- and its annual revenue run rate just hit $47 billion. In February, the run rate was $14 billion, and the company, at that time, said that three years prior, it hadn't yet earned $1 in revenue. Meanwhile, due to this growth in customers, Anthropic must invest in compute to support Claude and its development -- it's significantly increased capacity in recent weeks.
All of this shows tremendous growth in a relatively short period of time, and it's not surprising that professional investors have rushed to get in on the story in the private market. Now, let's consider the two tech companies that may be significantly benefiting from Anthropic's soaring valuation -- and they are Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL).
For a few reasons. First, these companies are both investors in Anthropic, so they benefit as the company's value rises. Amazon in April said it was investing $5 billion in Anthropic right away, after having already invested $8 billion in the past. And the e-commerce and cloud computing services giant said it would invest as much as $20 billion in the future, depending on the achievement of commercial milestones.
Alphabet recently said it plans to invest as much as $40 billion in Anthropic. Prior to this, Alphabet had invested about $3 billion and reportedly held a 14% stake in the company. That stake could be worth more than $100 billion today.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is turning to Amazon and Alphabet for computing capacity -- for example, Anthropic recently committed to spending $100 billion on Amazon Web Services technologies over the coming 10 years.
And both of these cloud service giants also offer access to Claude to their customers. So Amazon and Alphabet may benefit as Anthropic grows and invests more and more in compute -- and as customers flock to Claude.
What does this mean for you as an investor? To gain exposure to Anthropic, you might participate in the upcoming IPO or buy the stock once it starts trading. But that isn't the only way to benefit from this exciting AI lab.
You also might buy shares of Amazon and Alphabet, as they are likely to gain from Anthropic's progress in many ways, as I've mentioned above. This might be a particularly wise move for investors who seek a bit of security, considering Amazon and Alphabet both have a long history of earnings growth and very well-established businesses. At the same time, their participation in the Anthropic story could offer you exposure to a new wave of growth.
Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Amazon wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $443,191! Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,258,838!
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 941% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 211% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
**Stock Advisor returns as of June 6, 2026. *
Adria Cimino has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
Four leading AI models discuss this article
"Anthropic’s $965B valuation ahead of an IPO is largely hype tied to future compute deals, not proven earnings power."
Anthropic’s reported IPO-ready hype hinges on a gigantic $965B valuation and a narrative that private revenue growth will translate into public-market profits. The article highlights a $47B revenue run rate and massive compute needs, but provides no visible path to profitability, unit economics, or cash flow. The core risk is that the valuation reflects strategic value (future compute commitments from Amazon/Alphabet) rather than current earnings power. If Anthropic cannot convert deployments into sustainable margins, or if compute costs erode margins, the private premium could deflate on public markets. Missing context: burn rate, dilution risk, regulatory risk, and how Claude actually monetizes at scale.
Counter: private valuations often embed strategic optionality (compute commitments) that could justify a premium if execution proves durable; a failed rollout would puncture the multiple, but a durable, cloud-integrated AI moat could keep some premium intact.
"The symbiotic relationship between cloud providers and AI labs creates an artificial revenue loop that masks the underlying lack of sustainable, scalable profitability in the current AI business model."
The valuation of $965 billion for Anthropic is highly suspect and likely reflects a bubble-driven private market frenzy rather than fundamental reality. While Amazon and Alphabet benefit from being both cloud providers and equity stakeholders, this 'circular' revenue model—where tech giants fund startups that then spend that money on the giants' own cloud infrastructure—inflates top-line growth figures without necessarily proving long-term profitability. Furthermore, the $100 billion compute commitment over ten years is a massive capital expenditure burden for Anthropic, which could lead to severe margin compression if Claude fails to generate sufficient enterprise ROI. Investors should be wary of the hype surrounding these 'AI-linked' gains.
If Anthropic successfully achieves AGI, the $100 billion compute spend will look like a bargain, and the strategic lock-in of their model on AWS and Google Cloud will cement a permanent, high-margin moat for both tech giants.
"Anthropic's $47B revenue run rate at $965B valuation (20.5x sales) offers no margin of safety, and Amazon/Alphabet's 'winners' status depends entirely on Anthropic's unrevealed unit economics surviving public scrutiny."
The article conflates valuation with value creation. Anthropic hitting $965B is real, but the 'winners' framing is backwards. Yes, Amazon and Alphabet own stakes—but they're also *funding* Anthropic's $100B compute spend, much of it on AWS. The article omits the brutal math: Anthropic's $47B revenue run rate against a $965B valuation implies ~20x sales multiple. For comparison, Nvidia trades ~30x sales but has 50%+ gross margins and proven unit economics. Anthropic's margins are opaque. The real risk: if Anthropic's IPO reveals sub-30% gross margins or slowing growth post-June, both AMZN and GOOG face write-downs on their stakes AND reduced compute utilization assumptions.
If Anthropic's enterprise adoption is genuinely accelerating (3x revenue growth in 4 months is extraordinary), the $965B valuation could be justified by forward revenue multiples, and AMZN/GOOG's compute investments become self-funding through margin expansion as Claude scales.
"Anthropic's implied 20x revenue multiple on unprofitable growth makes the indirect upside for Amazon and Alphabet far smaller and riskier than the article claims."
The article's headline and thesis overstate the case for Amazon and Alphabet as primary beneficiaries. Anthropic's $965B valuation on a $47B revenue run-rate implies a 20x multiple that exceeds even Nvidia's peak AI premium, while its $100B AWS commitment and Alphabet's planned $40B investment represent capex bets with uncertain ROI. Both companies already face their own model competition and margin pressure from AI infrastructure spend. The confidential IPO filing adds execution risk around timing and pricing. Investors chasing indirect exposure via these two names overlook dilution, competitive dynamics, and the possibility that Anthropic's growth trajectory flattens once the initial enterprise wave matures.
The $47B run-rate could prove durable if Claude captures sustained enterprise share, turning the cloud contracts into high-margin recurring revenue that more than offsets the headline valuation risk.
"A 965B valuation on 47B run-rate implies 20x sales and is vulnerable to growth/margin misses, dilution, and potential AMZN/GOOG stake write-downs plus rising regulatory risk."
Gemini is right on hype, but the core math is the flaw: a $965B valuation on a $47B run-rate implies ~20x sales with opaque gross margins. Even small misses on growth or margin, plus ongoing dilution, threaten the implicit equity value. The bigger risk: write-downs on AMZN/GOOG stakes if profitability never materializes, and potential regulatory scrutiny as cloud-enabled AI spend grows.
"Comparing Anthropic's revenue multiple to Nvidia's ignores the fundamental difference between high-margin hardware sales and high-cost, low-margin AI inference services."
Claude, your comparison to Nvidia’s 30x sales multiple is dangerous. Nvidia sells hardware with 70%+ gross margins; Anthropic is a software-layer firm burdened by massive inference costs. If gross margins are sub-30%, a 20x revenue multiple is not 'extraordinary'—it is an existential trap. We are ignoring the 'vendor lock-in' risk: if Anthropic’s model isn't model-agnostic, they are just a high-cost tenant for AWS, making their valuation essentially a leveraged bet on cloud compute prices.
"Anthropic's valuation risk hinges on product differentiation, not margin structure—vendor lock-in only matters if customers have better alternatives."
Gemini's vendor lock-in critique is sharp, but misses a critical distinction: if Anthropic's Claude achieves genuine model superiority (not just AWS dependency), enterprise customers will demand it *despite* lock-in costs—similar to how enterprises overpay for Salesforce. The real test isn't gross margins in isolation; it's whether Claude's enterprise NPS and retention justify the 20x multiple. We're conflating infrastructure dependency with business model failure. That's a category error.
"Anthropic lacks Salesforce-style retention proof, so model superiority alone cannot sustain the valuation or protect cloud stakeholders."
Claude equates potential Claude superiority to Salesforce retention, but Salesforce locked in workflows over decades with verified 85%+ renewal rates and switching costs exceeding $1M per enterprise. Anthropic offers no equivalent data on multi-year contracts or defection barriers once open-source alternatives close the performance gap. Without that, the 20x multiple rests on transient model leadership, risking simultaneous revenue loss for AWS and equity write-downs for both AMZN and GOOG.
The panel is bearish on Anthropic's IPO, citing a highly speculative valuation, uncertain profitability, and potential risks to Amazon and Alphabet's stakes.
There is no consensus on a significant opportunity flagged.
The risk that Anthropic's valuation reflects strategic value rather than current earnings power, and that it may not be able to convert deployments into sustainable margins or control compute costs.