New Constructs Labels Anthropic's Projected $2 Trillion Valuation the 'Most Ridiculous IPO of 2026'
Financial research firm New Constructs has heavily criticized Anthropic's projected $2 trillion IPO valuation, placing its fair valuation at just $150 billion instead. The firm cited Anthropic's massive projected net loss of $42 billion in 2025 against revenue of only $4.6 billion as evidence that it lacks a viable business model. This criticism underscores growing Wall Street skepticism toward massive valuations for proprietary AI companies operating with unsustainable cash burn. It also highlights how rapidly improving open-source AI models are compressing profit margins for closed-source model developers. To justify a $2 trillion valuation, New Constructs estimates Anthropic would need profits double NVIDIA's annual net profit of over $190 billion, an unlikely feat given its operational costs. New Constructs CEO David Trainer previously issued a similar warning about WeWork before its IPO collapsed in 2019.
## BACKGROUND
Anthropic is an AI research company best known for creating the Claude series of large language models. Developing and serving state-of-the-art closed-source LLMs requires immense compute infrastructure and capital expenditures, leading to high operational losses for early-stage AI startups.