Just now, a huge bombshell has hit the AI world—
Reuters exclusively reported: Nvidia is in talks with Anthropic to invest up to $10 billion, diving into what could be the largest IPO in history!
That's right, you read that correctly.
The guy selling shovels, Jensen Huang, is about to put money directly into the hands of the gold diggers. And he's doing it as an "anchor investor."
$2 Trillion, The Largest IPO in Human History?
According to two sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters, Anthropic's IPO plans to raise up to $100 billion, targeting a valuation nearing $2 trillion.
If successful, this would shatter the record set by SpaceX in June this year, which raised $75 billion, making it the largest IPO in the history of global capital markets.
What does $100 billion mean? In the first eight months of this year, the entire US IPO market (excluding SPACs) raised only $137 billion.
In other words, Anthropic alone would account for 73% of the total market volume from the first eight months.
According to the report, Nvidia is considering investing up to $10 billion in the deal.
However, negotiations are still ongoing, and terms could change at any time. Anthropic declined to comment, and Nvidia has not yet responded.
The IPO is expected to be completed before the US midterm elections in November.
Jensen Huang's Calculus: More Than Just an Investment
An "anchor investor" is a major institutional buyer that commits to subscribing *before* the public roadshow, providing a vote of confidence to the market.
When Arm went public, Nvidia and Amazon were anchor investors; during SpaceX's IPO, Saudi Arabia's PIF played a similar role.
If Anthropic can secure a "headline buyer" of Nvidia's caliber, the signal to the entire capital market is unmistakable—even the GPU king is willing to put real money on the line, what are you waiting for?
But the story is far more nuanced than that.
There's a very delicate relationship here: Nvidia is both a "supplier" to Anthropic and its "investor."
Training and running the Claude models is inseparable from Nvidia's GPUs.
And just in November 2025, Nvidia invested $10 billion in Anthropic—in exchange, Anthropic committed to purchasing $30 billion worth of computing power on Microsoft Azure, which, incidentally, runs on Nvidia's chips.
Think about it: Nvidia invests $10 billion, Anthropic turns around and spends $30 billion on cloud services powered by Nvidia chips. The money goes full circle, right back into Jensen Huang's pocket.
Now, by adding another $10 billion during the IPO phase, this cycle extends from the private market to the public market.
And it's not just Nvidia.
On Anthropic's list of major backers, Amazon and Google also play the dual role of "investor + compute provider."
In April this year, Anthropic announced plans to invest over $100 billion in Amazon AWS over the next decade, using over 1 million Amazon Trainium2 chips; it also signed "multi-gigawatt" agreements to expand its use of Google and Broadcom's TPUs.
The capital logic of the AI industry couldn't be clearer: Money raised by model companies ultimately becomes purchase orders for computing power, flowing back into the hands of chip giants and cloud providers.
Investing in AI companies is essentially pre-booking customers for your own chips and cloud services.
Supporting this astronomical valuation is Anthropic's explosive growth trajectory.
At the end of 2025, Anthropic's annualized revenue was approximately $9 billion. By the end of July 2026, this number had skyrocketed to over $65 billion, a more than seven-fold increase in just seven months.
Reuters previously reported that Anthropic expects revenue to reach $190 to $200 billion by 2028.
In May this year, Anthropic just completed a $65 billion funding round, valuing the company at $965 billion. Now, the IPO is aiming to hit $2 trillion directly, effectively doubling the valuation in a matter of months.
Meanwhile, Claude's user demand is growing so fast that it has stretched Anthropic's existing computing resources thin.
To reduce dependence on external chips, Anthropic has even formed an internal team to begin developing custom chips in-house.
This Is Just the Beginning
Zooming out, Nvidia's $10 billion bet on Anthropic's IPO is a microcosm of the AI industry entering its "decisive moment" in 2026.
As of the end of August, the US IPO market has raised $137 billion, setting a historical record, and the year is far from over.
This means that from late 2026 into 2027, humanity will, for the first time, price "tickets to AGI" on the public capital markets.
Anthropic and OpenAI, the two companies considered most likely to reach artificial general intelligence first, will successively stand on the Nasdaq, facing public judgment from global investors.
Behind this IPO feast lies an unprecedented infrastructure arms race in human history. Global spending on AI-related projects has already reached $2.6 trillion.
Most crucially: Everyone is betting on the same thing—ASI is approaching.
Real product progress continues to validate this prediction.
When AI starts improving itself, when models start improving models, once this flywheel starts spinning, everything accelerates.
This is the real reason Nvidia is desperately pouring money into Anthropic: They are not just investing in a company's IPO; they are investing in a ticket to the age of ASI (Artificial Superintelligence).
References:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/nvidia-talks-invest-anthropics-mega-ipo-sources-say-2026-09-11/
Editor: Solomon
This article is from the WeChat public account "Xinzhiyuan", author: Xinzhiyuan
