Exclusive-Nvidia in talks to invest in Anthropic’s mega IPO, sources say

By Krystal Hu and Milana Vinn

Sept 11 (Reuters) - Anthropic is in talks to bring Nvidia as an anchor investor into what could be the largest IPO in history, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Anthropic is seeking to raise as much as $100 billion that could value the artificial intelligence startup at around $2 trillion, the people said. Nvidia is considering investing up to $10 billion in the IPO, one of the sources added. The plans remain under discussion and could change, they cautioned, requesting anonymity because the discussions are confidential. 

Nvidia’s potential involvement in the IPO, which has not previously been reported, would give Anthropic an early strategic backer for the outsized offering, while further deepening ties between the chipmaker and one of its major customers. Bringing a deep-pocketed anchor investor like Nvidia onboard could boost investor confidence in the listing, which is shaping up to be a major test of public-market appetite for the enormous valuations and capital requirements of frontier AI labs. 

Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Anchor investors are typically institutional investors that commit to buy a set portion of an IPO before it is marketed more broadly, providing an early vote of confidence in the shares. It is increasingly common for mega IPOs to line up early institutional commitments, given the large amounts they seek to raise. Chip designer Arm’s anchor investors included Nvidia and Amazon, while Saudi Arabia’s PIF was among SpaceX’s anchor investors.

The deepened relationship highlights the complex ties between AI model developers and the companies supplying the enormous amounts of computing power they require. Anthropic relies heavily on Nvidia GPUs, while also seeking to diversify its chip suppliers as demand for Claude has strained its available computing capacity.

In November 2025, Nvidia said it would invest up to $10 billion in the AI startup as part of a broader partnership under which Anthropic committed to buy $30 billion of Microsoft Azure computing capacity powered by Nvidia chips. 

Anthropic already counts the biggest tech companies in the world as backers. These include Amazon and Google, who are also its major compute suppliers. In April, Anthropic said it would commit more than $100 billion over a decade to Amazon’s AWS, while using more than 1 million of Amazon’s Trainium2 chips. It has also agreed with Google and Broadcom to add multiple gigawatts of TPU capacity.

The company has been trying to access more compute as its revenue has surged. It is also working to gain greater control over its hardware costs by forming an in-house team to design custom chips tailored to Claude. 

The listing, which is expected to complete before the U.S. midterm elections in November, would mark another jump in Anthropic’s valuation. The Claude maker raised $65 billion in May at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. Its annualized revenue run rate had climbed above $65 billion by the end of July, from about $9 billion at the end of 2025, according to the company. The potential valuation also hinges in part on company projections of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue in 2028, Reuters previously reported.

(Reporting by Krystal Hu in San Francisco and Milana Vinn in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)