Revenue Expansion Underpins Cramer’s Assessment
Anthropic’s rapid sales expansion provides a rationale for its proposed valuation above $1 trillion, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday as the developer of Claude updated its initial public offering paperwork. His assessment centered on whether the company’s revenue trajectory could support an offering potentially large enough to set a record.
According to the updated prospectus cited by CNBC, Anthropic generated $33.2 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2026, an increase of 1,206% from the same period a year earlier. Cramer described that pace as the central argument for the deal’s extraordinary size, while acknowledging that some growth measures have begun to moderate.
Offering Terms Set Up a Major Capital Raise
The revised filing outlines an offer of 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each. Pricing at the upper end would raise $64.35 billion and give Anthropic a fully diluted valuation of as much as $1.405 trillion. The company plans to set its share price on Nov. 18 and begin trading on Nov. 19; the proposed range is not a final price.
Anthropic also has a separate $26 billion private placement purchased by major AI companies, including Nvidia and Alphabet, CNBC reported. Taken together, the public offering and private placement could bring in more capital than SpaceX raised in its June IPO. That comparison depends on the eventual offering outcome and includes both sources of funding, rather than the public share sale alone.
Enterprise Customers Drive Demand
Business customers have accounted for much of Anthropic’s expansion, particularly through increased adoption of Claude Code, its AI coding agent. The company now has more than 11,900 customers spending over $100,000 annually, compared with roughly 1,500 at the end of 2025. The figures show a substantial increase in the number of customers making large commitments to its products.
Spending by existing customers has also risen sharply. Anthropic reported net revenue retention of approximately 900% at the end of September, indicating that customers were spending roughly nine times as much as a year earlier. Alongside the increase in large accounts, that measure helps explain how revenue has expanded so quickly: growth has come from deeper spending relationships as well as a larger enterprise customer base.
Sequential Slowdown Adds a Qualification
Despite the scale of the year-over-year increase, quarter-over-quarter revenue growth eased to 47% in the third quarter from 144% in the second. Cramer said the second quarter appeared to mark a peak in sequential growth, although he emphasized that the latest quarterly increase remained unusually strong.
Cramer attributed some moderation to the difficulty of sustaining extreme percentage gains as a business becomes larger. He also identified stronger competition from OpenAI and the possibility of customers examining their AI budgets more closely as potential contributors. Those explanations were his assessment, not confirmed causes of the slowdown.
Latest Run Rate and IPO Calendar Remain in Focus
Anthropic reported an annualized revenue run rate of $81 billion at the end of October. That measure extrapolates a year’s revenue from the most recent month’s sales; it is not revenue already earned over a full year. CNBC reported that the figure put a $100 billion run rate within reach by year-end if the current momentum continues.
Cramer viewed the planned deal as a positive signal for technology stocks and the AI trade, rather than a guarantee of market performance. Anthropic also faces less immediate competition for IPO attention from OpenAI, which has moved its flotation plans into next year. The next scheduled milestones are Anthropic’s pricing and trading debut, with its final valuation and fundraising total still to be determined.
Source: CNBC