NEW YORK — Wall Street bankers have reportedly solved the difficult question of how to value Anthropic by using revenues the AI company may earn several years from now, when evaluating it based on revenues it currently earns produced an insufficiently enormous number.
The breakthrough came after analysts realized that 2026 financials were unnecessarily constrained by events that have already happened.
“Historical numbers are useful for understanding the past,” explained one banker. “But valuations are about the future, where revenue is much higher and almost nothing has gone wrong yet.”
Banks examining a potential Anthropic IPO are reportedly focusing heavily on projections extending to 2028, when the company expects dramatically greater revenue.
The methodology represents an important advance over traditional valuation, which often suffers from inconvenient inputs such as profits, free cash flow, and reality.
Under the new model, any company can become attractively valued by moving sufficiently far down a spreadsheet.
A business worth $100 billion on next year’s earnings might be worth $500 billion using 2028 earnings, $1 trillion using 2032 earnings, and effectively priceless once analysts reach a year in which artificial general intelligence has eliminated accounting.
Wall Street emphasized that the projections remain conservative because they do not include several revenue streams that have not yet been imagined.
Investors reportedly welcomed the approach and asked whether 2047 was available.
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