In June 2026, the most valuable startup is not SpaceX and it is not OpenAI. It’s Anthropic, the maker of all Claude AI models. Anthropic edged past OpenAI’s roughly $852 billion mark to become, for the first time, the most valuable private AI lab in the world. A few days later, on June 1st, it filed draft IPO paperwork with the SEC. For anyone that is tuned in to the AI race, the question has shifted from “will Anthropic matter?” to “is now the moment to get exposure before it goes public?” I think the strongest version of that argument is the massive revenue growth. Their revenue is growing at a pace almost nobody has seen before. The company has gone from roughly $1 billion in annual revenue at the start of 2025 to a reported $47 billion run rate by May 2026. Additionally, that figure was around 30 billion earlier in the year, meaning the growth is fast, and still accelerating.

Several different analyses of the company describe roughly 10x annual revenue growth which was sustained for three straight years. Whatever discount you apply for the fact that these figures are self reported and unaudited, a company compounding like that is a genuinely rare powerhouse. Most startups would kill for one year of that motion, let alone three. The engine behind it is the software. Claude Code, Anthropics AI coding assistant, has become the company’s breakout product and with the success of Claude Code the customer base has reportedly grown from fewer than 1,000 two years ago to over 300,000.

Here's where the bull case gets interesting relative to OpenAI.

Both companies lose billions building their frontier models. But Anthropic has guided toward “positive free cash flow” by 2027, with some projections pointing to roughly $17 billion in cash flow by 2028. In contrast, OpenAI is reported to be burning tens of billions per year and not expecting actual profitability until the end of the decade. The reason for this is very strategic. Anthropic went the “enterprise first” approach rather than chasing hundreds of millions of mostly free consumer users. Selling Claude and Claude Code into businesses that actually pay producers better margins than running a big free consumer product and hoping a small slice converts. In this current environment investors are increasingly asking “but how does this make money?”Anthropic has a clearer answer than most of its peers.

Back in April, Anthropic unveiled their AI engine Mythos. This model was so capable that the company chose not to release it publicly due to cybersecurity risk. Mythos was restricted to a set of trusted partners along with the US government.

This created the following puzzle for the Anthropic team: how do you monetize an overly capable AI model that you’ve deliberately locked in a box?

Anthropic answered this on June 9th 2026 by launching Claude Fable 5. This was their publicly available “Mythos-class” AI model. Fable 5 carries the same intelligence as Mythos but it is equipped with safeguards that decrease risk. The guardrails reportedly trigger in fewer than 5% of sessions, so the majority of users get the full performance.

This matters for an investor because if Anthropic can take its most advanced research, wrap it in safety controls, and sell it broadly with very minimal user risk, it shows their dependability as a corporation. And for the vetted partners at the higher end of the user spectrum (US government, Apple, Google, Microsoft) the simultaneously released Mythos 5 serves them for cyberdefense and research.

The pre-IPO setup is unusually clean. Anthropic has filed confidentially and reports suggest a potential listing as soon as this fall on the Nasdaq or NYSE. The cap table (digital ledger that outlines exactly who owns what percentage of a company) for this IPO is expected but still very interesting. Google being the biggest followed by Amazon which already has around $8 billion invested. Smaller holders include Sequoia, Coatue, GIC, Fidelity, BlackRock, Samsung, ETC.

On the other hand, for this to be an honest case, I have to weigh the risks as well.

To start, private retail investors cannot purchase shares yet through a normal brokerage. And access today is largely limited to the high end partners. And in May 2026, Anthropic enforced their transfer restrictions where the Anthropic board can automatically void unapproved share sales. This shook the secondary market and resulted in many investors being left out.

As for their valuation, many analyses deem it as too good to be true. They are valued at roughly $965 billion and this math assumes Anthropic sustains their period of hypergrowth while also fending off their extremely well funded rivals, all at once. This valuation leaves very little room for setbacks and seems almost unrealistic.

Additionally, Anthropic filed lawsuits in March 2026 against the Trump administration and the Pentagon after the Defense Department designated the AI firm as a national security "supply chain risk." This clash comes from Anthropic's refusal to allow its technology, like Claude, to be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance. The CFO of Anthropic stated that the government’s action could “cut 2026 revenue by multiple billions of dollars” and cause damage that would be “almost impossible to reverse.” In this case, we are already seeing a shaky relationship between the US government and Anthropic which could negatively affect their IPO.

In all, if you are seriously considering investing when this IPO releases, you should understand exactly what it is you’re buying along with its liquidity and transfer restrictions, and size any position to what you can afford to lose. But ideally, speak with a licensed financial advisor. I’m not one, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell.