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This report is from this week's The Tech Download newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here. This week has been dominated by the hype around the highly anticipated IPOs of SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI. When Elon Musk's SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share, giving the company a record $1.77 trillion valuation, investors were left with one overriding question: Was it justified? The same question now hangs over Anthropic and OpenAI.
Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei speaks on an artificial intelligence panel during Inbound 2025 Powered by HubSpot at Moscone Center on in San Francisco, Sept. 4, 2025. Chance Yeh | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Will Anthropic's valuation stand up in the cold light of the public markets?
First blood to Anthropic. In the mad race to be the premier AI lab in the world, the company took a big step this week towards pipping bitter rival OpenAI to a public market listing. Anthropic is likely looking to take advantage of the huge momentum it's seen in recent months. It hit a $965 billion valuation and reported a $47 billion revenue run rate towards the end of May. The company's confidential filing of its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday capped off a remarkable few months for Anthropic, following a very public spat with the U.S. Department of Defense in February. The listing, alongside OpenAI's eventual move towards an IPO, will test appetite for pure-play frontier AI companies — a class of businesses that have up until now avoided the cold light of the public markets.
Gross margin
"Anthropic filing a confidential S-1 starts the clock on what will be the most scrutinized public offering in tech history," Harrison Rolfes, analyst at PitchBook, said. But, he added that the number that determines everything won't be the $965 billion valuation or the $47 billion revenue run rate — but gross margin. That figure is so important because it refers to the percentage of revenue left after paying the costs of providing AI services — which are sky high. "No one outside Anthropic has ever seen [gross margin], and it will either validate or collapse the entire narrative the private markets have been pricing for three years," said Rolfes. Supporting a high valuation is Anthropic's unprecedented growth, Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC. He added that the company "appears to have the lead" in the market for frontier AI models, too. But several very well funded competitors vying for the same market — including the likes of Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceX — could disrupt that lead, Luria said. "Much of their current usage is for trials and experimentation and that may not sustain."
The big picture
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