Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO Rush — and the Big Short Guy Who Wants a Crash to Stop It
October 3, 2026 · 5 min read
Anthropic is sprinting toward the public markets at a pace that would make most investment bankers nervous. According to Bloomberg and the Straits Times, the Claude-maker could kick off its IPO as early as mid-November — a formal roadshow starting the week of November 9, with shares trading before Thanksgiving on November 26. The timeline can still shift, but the intent is unmistakable: Anthropic wants to be a public company before the year is out.
A record that would make SpaceX look small
Start with the number that makes your head spin: some potential investors see $1.8 to $2 trillion as a reasonable valuation. That would smash the record SpaceX set in June — $1.77 trillion — making Anthropic's debut the largest IPO in history. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are lined up as underwriters, and the company is expected to raise roughly $100 billion. For perspective, that's more money than the entire stock market of most countries.
Now the number on the other side of the ledger: Anthropic's 2025 revenue came in near $4.6 billion — up twelvefold year over year — while its net loss reached $42 billion. Read that twice: revenue grew 12x, and the losses grew anyway. This is the deal Wall Street is being offered — pay up for the growth, look the other way on the losses, and bet on the curve. Some investors clearly think the math works.
Enter the man who bet against housing
Then Michael Burry showed up. The investor made famous by "The Big Short" took to X on September 29 with a post that was impossible to misread: "For the good of humanity, the market should crash hard to stop OpenAI and Anthropic from going public." He argued the two companies would "drain and destroy trillions of dollars of capital" — and that this would be merely "the least harm" they're capable of causing. When a commenter joked it sounded like a plan to stop Skynet from going public, Burry answered: pretty much.
Burry has been building this case all year. Last November he accused cloud giants of underestimating AI server depreciation to inflate their profits. Now he's aiming higher — not at the accounting, but at the listings themselves. He's not the only skeptic in the room: OpenAI's Sam Altman has said going public in 2026 would be "unwise." Anthropic is charging ahead anyway.
The fastest fundraising race in tech history
Step back and the scene is almost absurd. On one side: the largest IPO ever attempted, a $100 billion raise, a roadshow timed to the week before Thanksgiving. On the other: one of the most famous bearish investors alive, calling for a crash to kill it. Both sides agree on one thing — AI companies are about to absorb mind-bending amounts of capital. They disagree on whether that's investment or incineration. And remember, the $1.8–2 trillion figure is what some investors consider reasonable, not a guaranteed price: the roadshow has to actually sell it.
What it means for the rest of us
You probably won't get IPO allocation, and Burry's crash isn't yours to schedule. But the outcome seeps into your world either way. If Anthropic pulls this off, every AI lab will follow it to the public markets — and the price of AI services, from the tools you use at work to the models in your phone, will start answering to quarterly earnings calls. If the listing stumbles — or the skepticism spreads — the AI boom's funding pipeline tightens, and the free-lunch era of cheap AI tools gets shorter. Either way, watch the week of November 9. That's when the biggest gamble in market history goes on sale.