Anthropic Will Be The Last AI IPO Of 2026, As Industry Collapses

Henry Blodget, who founded Business Insider, said that Anthropic's revenue growth from one month to the next stopped increasing last month. CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), a company that provides cloud computing services, is paying interest rates as high as 13% on new loans if it can raise the money. Trading in financial contracts linked to its debt has increased sharply. These contracts, called credit default swaps, can help protect investors if a borrower fails to pay its debts. SoftBank, which owns several large AI companies, is also having debt problems. In addition, as many as 1,000 communities are trying to stop AI data centers from being built. Borrowing to pay for these centers could reach $1 trillion a year through 2030. Even the largest publicly traded technology companies cannot pay for all this themselves. They have turned to Wall Street to raise money. Shares in Elice, an AI data center company, fell 33% when it first sold shares to the public. Bloomberg reported that, based on its data, this was the worst first day of trading ever for a large IPO in South Korea. (Bloomberg's report.)

Finally, and perhaps most urgently, Reuters reported that OpenAI is trying to raise money faster before Anthropic's IPO, or first sale of shares to the public.

Together, these events suggest that AI companies are trying to raise money that is no longer available, or has become much harder to find. Even Nvidia's (NASDAQ: NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) heavy investment across the AI industry seems to have slowed.

Experienced investors have repeatedly said that this is not the year 2000. The dot-com bubble collapsed because too many new companies ran out of money and could not earn enough to stay in business. Now, more AI companies are borrowing money at very high interest rates, similar to the rates charged on junk bonds, which are risky loans. This makes the current year look more like the period 25 years ago.

People who are optimistic about AI continue to argue that this technology is much more important than the invention of the internet. Some say it is even more important than building railroads, which required huge amounts of money when they were first developed. Another possible comparison is the car industry, where 564 companies failed.

Anthropic is probably the most valuable privately owned AI company. Some people think it could be worth $2 trillion on the day it first sells shares to the public. That would make it more valuable than SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) or Meta (NASDAQ: META). The argument is that Anthropic's revenue is growing faster than that of other large AI companies and that its leaders say the company makes a profit. But under traditional GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), it does not make a profit because training AI models and running the computer systems they need cost so much. This is part of the unclear accounting surrounding the AI industry. For example, Nvidia invests in an AI company, and that company then uses the money to buy Nvidia's chips.

Pessimism about funding for AI companies spread within days. Shares in companies across the industry fell, although they later recovered a little. How these shares perform may determine whether any AI company goes public this year.

Anthropic earns a large amount of its revenue from business customers. This gives it a strong case for being the most successful private AI company and the one most likely to succeed. But it may face one major problem: becoming a public company. An unusual trust, reportedly created to make sure the company benefits the world rather than simply makes money, appears to control Anthropic's board. The available information about this arrangement is incomplete.

In these conditions, Anthropic may still complete its IPO, though its value might be less than $2 trillion. No other AI company is likely to go public this year.