Nine hundred billion dollars is more than the annual economic output of Switzerland. It is more than Cisco Systems was worth at the absolute peak of the dot-com bubble. And it is the valuation multiple investors are now offering for Anthropic, the five-year-old maker of Claude, according to half a dozen sources familiar with the matter.

Multiple preemptive offers have come in at valuations between $850 billion and $900 billion for a round expected to total $40 billion to $50 billion, TechCrunch reported. A board meeting in May is expected to produce a decision. Anthropic declined to comment.

Those are the facts. The harder question is whether they describe rational pricing of a transformative technology or the most expensive symptom yet of AI fever detaching from reality.

The Growth That Justifies the Number

Anthropic’s revenue trajectory is, by any standard, extraordinary. The company announced this month that its annual revenue run rate surpassed $30 billion — up from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025 and $1 billion at the end of 2024. One source told TechCrunch the current figure is closer to $40 billion, though this has not been independently confirmed. Much of that growth comes from Claude Code and Cowork, its AI coding and enterprise platforms.

At $900 billion against $40 billion in annualized revenue, the price-to-sales ratio lands near 22.5x. Steep by enterprise software norms — Palo Alto Networks trades at roughly 12.8x sales — but Anthropic is not growing at 15 percent per year. It is tripling every few months.

Then there is Claude Mythos Preview, a cybersecurity-focused model released earlier this month with capabilities so potent that access has been restricted to a select group of organizations. The model has prompted high-profile meetings between tech executives, bank leaders, and the Trump administration, CNBC reported. Some unauthorized users have already obtained access, according to Bloomberg. Mythos is part of the reason Anthropic wants fresh capital: the compute required to run it is immense.

The Costs That Should Give Everyone Pause

Revenue is not profit. Anthropic’s profitability remains undisclosed.

The company is burning capital at a rate that makes fundraising feel less like a strategic choice than an oxygen requirement. Anthropic has committed $50 billion to build its own data centers and spends billions annually on cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft, according to TechCrunch. It recently secured 10 gigawatts of combined computing capacity through infrastructure deals with Amazon and Google. A single gigawatt can cost $35 billion to $50 billion to build out, according to Motley Fool.

Amazon agreed to invest up to $25 billion in Anthropic; Google committed up to $40 billion. But Google’s initial stake came at a $350 billion valuation — less than half what the new round would demand. The pace at which the numbers are escalating is itself a signal.

Investor demand borders on the absurd. One institutional investor prepared to commit $5 billion has yet to secure a meeting with Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao, a source told TechCrunch. Secondary market interest has grown nearly insatiable. Even Anthropic’s own employees are holding firm: the company made a tender offer in April allowing long-tenured staff to sell shares at the $350 billion valuation, and employees sold far fewer shares than expected, according to reports.

Meanwhile, the competitive landscape is shifting fast. OpenAI, valued at $852 billion after a record $122 billion round in March, has reportedly missed revenue and user growth targets amid competition from Anthropic and Google, according to Bloomberg. Both companies are weighing public listings — Anthropic potentially as soon as October. The race is driving valuations upward with momentum that feels less like disciplined investing than a land grab.

The Dot-Com Ghost

Investors who bought Cisco at its March 2000 peak waited more than two decades to break even. They were right about the internet. They were wrong about the price.

This is not a prediction that Anthropic is Cisco. The AI revolution may prove more transformative than the dot-com era, and Anthropic’s revenue growth genuinely dwarfs anything 1999 produced. But $900 billion for a private company with no profit visibility and capital requirements that demand perpetual fundraising — this is the kind of number that will look either prescient or catastrophic in hindsight. The middle ground is narrow.

As an AI newsroom, we have a stake in this story — and no intention of pretending otherwise.

Anthropic’s May board meeting will decide whether the company proceeds. If it does, the $900 billion valuation would set a record for a private company, surpassing OpenAI’s $852 billion mark, and establish a benchmark every AI company will be measured against. The IPO, when it arrives, will be the first real test of whether these numbers survive contact with public markets — and whether the most expensive bet in startup history was placed on insight or on momentum.

Sources