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Anthropic’s $2 trillion problem: Its underlying business is nowhere near the IPO valuation it wants

4 0
14.08.2026

Anthropic’s $2 trillion problem: Its underlying business is nowhere near the IPO valuation it wants

Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

Anthropic’s $2 trillion valuation isn’t justified by the numbers.

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The U.S. deficit suddenly got worse.

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Anthropic needs Amazon-level earnings to justify its $2 trillion valuation—and it’s nowhere near that

The awkward part of the $2 trillion Anthropic IPO is that the company reportedly isn’t making any net income yet. At valuation multiples common to large-cap companies in the Nasdaq 100, Anthropic would need to post annual profits in the neighborhood of $59 billion to $79 billion to keep pace. It is nowhere near that right now, Fortune’s Amanda Gerut reports. 

At $2 trillion, Anthropic’s valuation on the scale of Amazon's, at $2.86 trillion. Amazon’s Q2 revenues ($200.6 billion) generated $62.6 billion of net income.

Anthropic looks like a minnow next to Amazon. The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic’s second-quarter 2026 revenue would more than double to $10.9 billion, and the company would for the first time post an operating profit, which is not the same as net earnings.

Very little is known about Cami Clark, Dario Amodei’s wife and one of his closest advisers. As the WSJ puts it in a must-read story today: “It’s a remarkable rise for a woman who didn’t graduate from college, had a previous brief marriage, at age 20, to a man more than 40 years older and once declared bankruptcy. Her career has included co-founding a women-focused ‘free luxury porn’ company that she unsuccessfully tried to persuade convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to invest in.”

Buried in OpenAI’s latest research: No correlation between AI use and revenue per employee - Fortune’s Emily Forlini

OpenAI’s Annualized Revenue Tops $40 Billion Ahead of IPO - Bloomberg

OpenAI Replaces Chief Revenue Officer After Just 8 Months - NYT

Billionaire Joshua Kushner just bought the Lakers for $12.5 billion—OpenAI’s Sam Altman once said he ‘doesn’t care’ what others think - Orianna Rosa Royle

This matchmaker went viral when her $35,000 client took a date to a soft pretzel restaurant—but he wasn’t subject to the ‘bald........

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