New Constructs’ criticism of Anthropic’s reported IPO valuation has brought renewed attention to the gap between the company’s growth and its projected market value. The research firm’s October 6 report called the potential listing the “Most Ridiculous IPO of 2026,” arguing that a roughly $2 trillion valuation would require substantial future growth and profitability.
The financial figures behind that argument come from a draft prospectus reviewed by Reuters, rather than a publicly available final registration statement. Reuters reported that Anthropic generated nearly $4.6 billion in revenue in 2025 but recorded a $42 billion net loss, including a roughly $34 billion accounting charge tied to the revaluation of financing instruments.
The crypto connection is that traders have not had to wait for a public listing to speculate on the company’s valuation. Platforms including Hyperliquid-based protocols and centralized exchanges have offered synthetic derivatives tied to private companies such as Anthropic, SpaceX, and OpenAI.
New Constructs’ Case Against Anthropic’s Valuation
New Constructs, which notably labeled WeWork the “most ridiculous IPO” in 2019 before that offering collapsed, built its case on figures it says come from a leaked prospectus. The firm noted that it had not received Anthropic’s S-1 directly.
According to reporting on the draft prospectus, Anthropic’s revenue grew roughly twelvefold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion. Its operating loss widened to about $8.06 billion from $2.98 billion in 2024, while its net loss reached $42 billion. The distinction between operating and net losses is important. The reported $42 billion net loss included a roughly $34 billion accounting charge associated with an increase in the estimated value of financing instruments that could eventually convert into shares. That charge was not equivalent to $34 billion in cash operating expenditure.
New Constructs compared the reported financial results with a potential IPO valuation of around $2 trillion. Its model estimated a fair value of roughly $150 billion, although that figure represents the firm’s valuation estimate rather than an established market value. The firm argued that the proposed valuation would require Anthropic to sustain exceptionally strong growth and eventually generate substantial profits. Its conclusion was blunt: “We don’t think Anthropic has a viable business.”
That is the research firm’s assessment, not an established conclusion about Anthropic’s long-term prospects.
The report also highlighted the company’s reported commitments to cloud computing and infrastructure. Reuters said the draft prospectus outlined approximately $518 billion in future obligations, while Anthropic’s reported 2025 revenue was about $4.6 billion. Those figures describe different things: annual revenue and planned commitments over a longer period. Comparing them helps illustrate the scale of Anthropic’s infrastructure plans, but does not by itself establish whether those commitments will generate an adequate return.
New Constructs also pointed to customer concentration. A quarter of Anthropic’s 2025 revenue reportedly came from two customers, while Amazon and Google were both investors and important cloud infrastructure providers.
The company’s draft prospectus also reportedly discussed risks associated with advanced AI systems, including the possibility of harmful or unexpected model behavior. These disclosures add another dimension to the investment debate beyond conventional revenue and profitability measures.
Why SpaceX Is Part of the Comparison
New Constructs also compared Anthropic’s potential valuation with SpaceX, which completed a major public listing in June 2026 at a reported valuation of about $1.77 trillion.
As per previous reporting by The Crypto Times, Anthropic’s potential $2 trillion valuation would be higher than SpaceX’s reported listing valuation, despite Anthropic’s substantial operating losses. The comparison illustrates the scale of the valuations being discussed for companies associated with AI and other high-growth technology sectors. However, the two businesses operate in different markets, and their financial profiles are not directly interchangeable. A valuation comparison alone does not establish which company is more attractive or whether either valuation is justified.
SpaceX’s listing also created a public-market reference price for traders who had previously used synthetic derivatives to speculate on its expected valuation. The Crypto Times tracked that transition in its coverage of SpaceX perpetual futures and their open interest after the listing.
Together, the Anthropic and SpaceX cases show how private-company valuations can become a subject of public trading and debate before and after a listing. They do not, by themselves, establish that the wider IPO market is being priced irrationally.
How Crypto Traders Get Pre-IPO Exposure
Pre-IPO perpetual futures allow traders to speculate on a private company’s expected share price or implied valuation before its stock trades publicly. These products can operate on centralized exchanges or on-chain trading venues. Unlike ordinary shares, synthetic pre-IPO perpetuals do not confer equity ownership, voting rights, dividends or an allocation in the eventual IPO. They provide derivative exposure to a reference price determined under the contract’s rules.
Depending on the venue, pricing can rely on an order book, an oracle or a combination of external valuation inputs and market data. Funding payments help keep perpetual contracts aligned with their reference prices, but they do not guarantee that the contract will accurately predict the eventual listing price.
The products also differ in their terms, leverage limits, collateral requirements, and settlement mechanisms. Traders therefore cannot assume that two contracts referencing the same private company represent identical exposure.
The market has included SpaceX-linked contracts on Trade.xyz and Hyperliquid, as well as products tied to Anthropic and OpenAI on other platforms. These markets can provide a visible indication of how some traders value a company ahead of its listing. But their prices are not equivalent to a formal valuation by the company, a private funding round or an IPO underwriter. Thin liquidity, leverage, and venue-specific pricing rules can cause significant differences between implied valuations.
Traders Have Faced Sharp Losses
The risks became visible during the pre-IPO trading period for SpaceX. In May, a pricing and oracle incident involving Ventuals’ SpaceX-linked market triggered a sharp move and liquidations. Ventuals subsequently pledged compensation to affected traders. The incident illustrates a risk specific to synthetic derivatives: traders can lose money because of the contract’s pricing and market structure, even when the underlying company has not experienced a comparable change in its business fundamentals.
Leverage can magnify the consequences. If a position moves against a trader, a margin requirement or liquidation mechanism can force the position to close before the trader has an opportunity to wait for a price recovery.
Claims that a particular contract fell by 45% or that a separate token fell by 80% should be tied to the relevant venue, trading pair, and time window before publication. Those figures should not be presented as losses experienced by every trader or as evidence that all pre-IPO products behave alike.
The broader lesson is that a private company’s implied valuation is not a guaranteed future listing price. A contract can trade above or below the eventual IPO price, and differences in liquidity, pricing methodology and leverage can make the path especially volatile.
Polymarket Adds a Layer of IPO Speculation
The speculation isn’t limited to price. The crypto-based prediction market Polymarket spotlighted its own Anthropic IPO market, where traders wager on whether, and when, the company will actually go public. By Polymarket’s odds, Anthropic has become the frontrunner among 2026’s big debuts, overtaking SpaceX in the betting, with date-specific contracts drawing active volume.
In other words, two different corners of crypto are now pricing the same event from opposite ends: perps on what Anthropic is worth, and prediction markets on whether the bell will ring at all.
The Other Side of the Trade
New Constructs is, by design, a contrarian voice, and its “most ridiculous” label is analysis rather than verdict. Bulls can point to the same prospectus for a very different read: revenue that reportedly grew more than tenfold in a year and is on pace for roughly $100 billion in annualized run-rate by the end of 2026; a May private round that valued the company near $965 billion with more than $120 billion in committed capital behind it; and a strategic position at the center of the AI build-out that few companies can claim.
The firm’s steepest downside cases also rest on assumptions — margins, growth rates, and a discount rate — that reasonable analysts can and do dispute. None of that resolves the core tension New Constructs identifies between the price and the profits, but it is the context in which investors, on Wall Street and on-chain, will make the call.
Why It Matters for Crypto Markets
For crypto, the episode marks a genuine shift: digital-asset rails have become a live venue for pre-IPO price discovery on the very companies defining this market cycle, often months before retail investors can touch the stock. That is a real innovation — and a real hazard.
The same leverage that let traders express a view on Anthropic or SpaceX early also handed them outsized losses when sentiment turned, and the contracts convey none of the rights of actual ownership. As Wall Street debates whether 2026’s biggest IPOs are visionary or “ridiculous,” crypto has already run the experiment in miniature; and the results, so far, argue for caution on both sides of the ticker.
