Seaport offers preliminary thoughts on Anthropic stock

 Ahead of its highly anticipated initial public offering, artificial intelligence developer Anthropic is navigating a critical pivot from renting compute power to securing direct control over its data center infrastructure, according to an initiation report published by Seaport Research Partners. 

Seaport, which deferred assigning a formal rating pending the IPO, noted that Anthropic is reportedly seeking a valuation between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion.

The research firm’s discounted cash flow analysis models an enterprise value of approximately $1.64 trillion, suggesting the rumored placeholder valuation is achievable if the company sustains aggressive growth through 2028.

The Silicon Valley-based Public Benefit Corporation has scaled at a historic pace, transforming from zero revenue to $2.2 billion in just seven quarters before logging $11.55 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2026.

Unprecedented capital efficiency and growth

Anthropic has established itself as one of the most productive enterprises globally, capitalizing on the deployment of its Claude AI models across direct channels and cloud service providers. Cloud partnerships - including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure - accounted for 48% of the company’s revenue in the first half of 2026.

Seaport estimates Anthropic generated $3.19 million in revenue per employee in the third quarter of 2026, easily surpassing mega-cap tech peers.

The company counts 40 million total customers, including 11,900 spending over $100,000 annually and 250 spending more than $10 million. Customer retention reached 900% in 2025.

Anthropic increased its revenue per dollar of compute expense by 5.2 times between the first quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026, allowing it to turn a profit in Q2 2026.

The "Anthropic direct" pivot

Despite achieving profitability in mid-2026, Seaport projects Anthropic will return to operating losses in 2027 as it executes a massive infrastructure transition dubbed "Anthropic Direct".

Recognizing that reliance on cloud service providers- who are also competitors- is no longer sufficient, Anthropic has initiated a program to lease and manage its own data center hardware.

Seaport estimates the company has amassed nearly $800 billion in purchase and lease commitments extending through 2033. This includes a $161.2 billion equipment lease with Broadcom, a $114.5 billion commitment to Google Cloud, and a $120.5 billion arrangement involving a SpaceXAI facility.

To fund the infrastructure shift, Anthropic raised an additional $122 billion in equity and convertible debt in 2026, bringing its cumulative primary capital raised to over $141 billion.

Governance complexity

Seaport flagged significant risks tied to Anthropic’s convoluted corporate governance and the intense competitive landscape.

As a Public Benefit Corporation, Anthropic operates under a Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT) that holds a special class of shares (Class T) granting it the power to appoint four of the company’s seven board members.

Concurrently, the company’s seven co-founders hold Class F shares that provide 50.1% of common voting rights. Post-IPO public investors (Class A) will hold just 49.9% of voting rights, effectively giving permanent control to the LTBT and the founders.

On the commercial front, Anthropic must defend its ~70% gross margins against a growing ecosystem of open-weight models that operate with 30% gross margins and set an effective price floor just above the cost of electricity.

Nevertheless, Anthropic has sustained premium pricing power to date, continuing to list its frontier Opus 5 model at $10 per million tokens, above flagship offerings from U.S. rivals.