Anthropic's $965 billion valuation gets doubled by leveraged crypto bets

Crypto traders have valued Anthropic at about $2.12 trillion using leveraged derivatives that don’t actually carry a stake in the company. That’s more than twice the $965 billion valuation the maker of Claude last raised money at in May.

The wager comes weeks before Anthropic is anticipated to file the prospectus that will finally put a real number on the company.

Binance assumes 1 billion shares to reach its $2,120 quote

Binance’s ANTHROPIC/$USDT contract hit $2,120 on September 9. Binance takes that price and converts it into a company value by assuming one billion shares outstanding, which is how the quote reads as a $2.12 trillion valuation.

Similar contracts traded in the same range on Bitget, Kraken, BingX, Aster, and Coinbase International.

Binance on June 2 listed the perpetual, settled in tether, with leverage of as much as 20 times. Its price is driven by exchange trading activity, not any public share count.

The exchange said its one billion share number was solely for informational purposes and implied valuation was not attributable to or endorsed by Binance. By contrast, OKX picks up 10 billion shares, resulting in a much smaller per-unit quote but at about the same company value.

Prestocks launches an ANTHROPIC token on Solana connected to a special purpose vehicle. On September 9, it traded near $961 to $973, giving it a market cap of about $7.1 million and suggesting an Anthropic value closer to $1.59 trillion.

That is way below what the leveraged perps say the company is worth.

Anthropic has attempted to take down that channel. In May, the company said it does not permit SPVs to hold its stock, that transfers into such vehicles are void, and that third parties offering exposure via tokenized securities or forward contracts might be offering something that is worth nothing.

PreStocks tokens fell after the warning by an estimated 34% to 45%, with other tallies putting the fall closer to 27%.

Anthropic’s revenue run-rate jumped to $65 billion by the end of July

Anthropic’s private valuation went from $380 billion in February to $965 billion in May, and its annualized revenue run-rate was disclosed to be close to $47 billion at the close of its Series H before it was reported to be around $65 billion by the end of July.

According to Ramp’s August index, 43.5% of US companies bought Anthropic subscriptions or tokens in July, ahead of 39.7% of companies buying subscriptions or tokens from OpenAI, while second-quarter revenue more than doubled to $11.6 billion, Cryptopolitan reported.

Bankers and investors have floated a listing in the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion range. Some backers are contemplating a figure of around $2 trillion versus an OpenAI target of up to $1 trillion.

Anthropic is expected to market its offering in mid-October and complete the listing just before the US midterm elections in November, with the prospectus now postponed to late September.

The company confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC on June 1 and is working to close a $15 billion revolving credit facility with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citi among the banks on the deal.

Binance said it will rescale ANTHROPIC/$USDT if an amended S-1 shows a share count more than 3% off its figure. The books are thin, for now.

There are a dozen plus Anthropic perpetual markets listed on DeFiLlama, but the largest have tens of millions of dollars in combined open interest.

The nearest comparison for an Anthropic listing near $2 trillion was SpaceX’s June IPO at $1.77 trillion.