Nvidia in talks to anchor Anthropic’s record $100B IPO

Nvidia ↗ 2.78% is in discussions to invest up to $10 billion as an anchor investor in Anthropic's forthcoming initial public offering, which could raise as much as $100 billion and value the Claude maker at roughly $2 trillion, according to two people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters.reuters

The deal, if completed, would make Anthropic's IPO the largest in history and cement Nvidia's role at the center of the artificial intelligence economy — not just as a chip supplier but as a financial backer of the companies consuming its hardware.

A Deepening Relationship

The discussions, first reported by Reuters on Friday, remain fluid and could still change, the sources cautioned. But the move would build on an already substantial relationship between the two companies. In November 2025, Nvidia committed up to $10 billion in Anthropic as part of a broader strategic partnership, under which Anthropic agreed to purchase $30 billion of Microsoft ↘ 0.99% Azure computing capacity powered by Nvidia chips.anthropic+2

More recently, Anthropic signed a $35 billion cloud-computing deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda for a Texas data center where Nvidia itself holds the lease, according to The Wall Street Journal News Corp ↘ 0.03%. That arrangement, disclosed in late August, involves a 15-year lease at a facility developed by Hut 8 ↗ 14.58%.wsj+1

The IPO Takes Shape

Anthropic confidentially filed its S-1 with the SEC on June 1. Its prospectus is expected to land in late September, with marketing efforts beginning by mid-October and a listing anticipated before the November midterm elections.globalbankingandfinance+2

The company's growth trajectory has been steep. Its annualized revenue run rate climbed above $65 billion by the end of July, up from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025. Anthropic raised $65 billion in a Series H round in May at a post-money valuation of $965 billion.cryptobriefing+3

Anchor investors typically commit to buying a set portion of an IPO before broader marketing begins, providing an early vote of confidence. In past mega offerings, Nvidia and Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. ↘ 0.35% served as anchor investors in Arm's ↗ 4.74% IPO, while Saudi Arabia's PIF anchored SpaceX's listing.globalbankingandfinance

Risks and Competition

The potential $2 trillion valuation would face scrutiny from public-market investors weighing the enormous capital demands of frontier AI. Anthropic has committed more than $100 billion over a decade to Amazon's AWS and signed tens of billions more in cloud deals with other providers. Meanwhile, competition from lower-cost Chinese AI models has raised questions about whether U.S. AI companies can sustain the margins their valuations imply.247wallst+1