Cramer says Anthropic growth justifies record IPO valuation

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday that Anthropic’s revenue growth helps justify its $1 trillion-plus valuation ahead of what could become the largest initial public offering in history.

The Claude developer filed updated IPO paperwork outlining plans to offer 825 million shares at $70 to $78 apiece, CNBC reported. At the high end, the offering would raise $64.35 billion and value Anthropic at up to $1.405 trillion on a fully diluted basis. The company plans to price its shares Nov. 18 and begin trading the following day.

“The fact that this deal is on is bullish for tech and the AI trade,” Cramer said. Throw in a separate $26 billion private placement purchased by leading AI companies including Nvidia and Alphabet, and Anthropic’s entire haul could exceed SpaceX’s raise from its June IPO. The scale of the offering is a statement about the amount of capital flowing into AI, and the revenue numbers are the evidence the market will use to decide if the valuation is justified.

The revenue numbers

Anthropic reported $33.2 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2026, up 1,206% from a year earlier, according to its updated prospectus. Much of that growth has been driven by enterprise customers, particularly surging adoption of Claude Code, its AI coding agent. The company now has more than 11,900 customers spending over $100,000 annually, up from roughly 1,500 at the end of 2025.

Existing customers are also spending dramatically more, with Anthropic reporting a net revenue retention rate of approximately 900% at the end of September, meaning customers are spending roughly nine times as much as a year earlier. The retention rate is the most striking number in the filing, because it means that the customers Anthropic already had are expanding their usage at a pace that is unusual in enterprise software. A 900% retention rate means that the average customer who was spending $100,000 a year ago is now spending $900,000, and that is the kind of growth that supports a trillion-dollar valuation.

“Anthropic’s tantalizing growth rate is the key reason why this should be the largest IPO in history,” Cramer said. The annualized revenue run rate, which projects yearly revenue based on the most recent month’s sales, was $81 billion at the end of October, putting the company within striking distance of $100 billion by year-end if its current momentum continues.

The growth deceleration

While Anthropic is seeing accelerating revenue growth through the first nine months of the year, the company’s quarter-over-quarter growth rate seemed to peak in the second quarter, slowing to 47% in the third quarter from 144% in Q2.

“To some extent, it’s the law of large numbers at work, and let’s be clear that 47% sequential growth is still very impressive,” Cramer said. While some deceleration is inevitable as the company gets larger, he said that increased competition from OpenAI and the possibility that customers are beginning to scrutinize their AI spending could also be factors.

The deceleration is the bear case in one number. A 47% sequential growth rate is still extraordinary, but the drop from 144% is a signal that the hyper-growth phase is ending and the company is entering a phase where growth is still strong but decelerating. The valuation at $1.4 trillion depends on the growth rate staying high enough to grow into the price, and the deceleration raises the question of whether the rate will stabilize at 47% or continue to slow. If it stabilizes, the valuation is justified. If it continues to slow, the stock will struggle after the IPO.

One thing is for sure, Anthropic will not have to jockey for position with OpenAI, which pushed its IPO plans into next year. The absence of a competing offering means that Anthropic will capture the full demand for AI exposure in the public markets, and the $64.35 billion raise is the kind of number that only happens when there is no competition for capital, CNBC reported.

The enterprise adoption story

The growth is driven by enterprise adoption, particularly of Claude Code, the AI coding agent. The 11,900 customers spending over $100,000 annually is up from 1,500 at the end of 2025, a nearly eightfold increase in the customer base. The combination of new customers and expanded spending from existing customers is the dual engine of the growth, and it is the pattern that enterprise software investors look for.

The 900% net revenue retention rate is the number that matters most for the long-term case. It means that Anthropic is not just adding customers, it is deepening its relationship with the ones it has. The customers are finding more use cases for Claude, expanding the number of seats, and increasing their spend as the models become more capable and the usage scales. This is the kind of growth that compounds, because each customer becomes more valuable over time, and the revenue base builds on itself.

“It’s good to see that it’s still growing nicely,” Cramer said. “As for Anthropic’s revenue and growth rate, the main subject of tonight’s review, it’s nothing less extraordinary, even if we are slightly past the peak, growth-wise.”

What I think

The revenue numbers are strong enough to justify the valuation, and Cramer is right that the growth rate is the reason the IPO should be the largest in history. The $33.2 billion in revenue through September is real, and the 1,206% year-over-year growth is the kind of number that the market will pay a premium for. The $81 billion annualized run rate at the end of October is the forward-looking signal, and it puts Anthropic on a path to $100 billion in revenue by year-end, which is a revenue base that supports a $1.4 trillion valuation at a price-to-sales ratio of 14.

The deceleration from 144% to 47% sequential growth is the concern, but it is not a disqualifier. Every hyper-growth company decelerates as it scales, and the law of large numbers makes it mathematically impossible to sustain 144% sequential growth on a base of $33 billion. The question is where the growth rate stabilizes, and 47% is still high enough to grow into the valuation. If the sequential growth rate stabilizes in the 30% to 50% range, the stock will perform well after the IPO, because the revenue will compound at a rate that justifies the price.

The enterprise adoption story is the most durable part of the case. The 900% net revenue retention rate means that the customers Anthropic has are not leaving, and they are spending more. That is the opposite of the churn problem that killed earlier enterprise software companies, and it is the pattern that investors in Salesforce and ServiceNow recognized early. The Claude Code adoption is the driver, because coding is a use case where the value is measurable and the ROI is clear, and developers who use the tool expand their usage quickly.

The OpenAI competition is the risk that the filing does not fully address. OpenAI pushed its IPO to next year, but it is still competing for the same customers, and the enterprise AI market is not winner-take-all. If OpenAI’s products improve and the customers who are spending $900,000 with Anthropic start splitting their spend, the retention rate will come down. The $26 billion private placement from Nvidia and Alphabet is a hedge against this risk, because it aligns the two largest cloud companies with Anthropic’s success and gives them an incentive to distribute Claude through their platforms. The IPO is the pricing event for the AI sector, and the numbers are strong enough to set a high benchmark. The stock will perform if the growth rate stabilizes, and the enterprise adoption story gives it the durability to weather the competition.