Anthropic’s S-1 Filing: A Review. Near-Record Year: The Q3 M&A Check-In.

On October 26, we got a look at Anthropic’s public S-1 filing for the first time. The company has applied to list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under ticker “ANT”. For the time being, we still don’t know the price range, share count, or raise size. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the underwriting syndicate, composed of roughly 30 banks.

Anthropic booked $16.3 billion of revenue in H1 2026, up from $1.16 billion in the same period last year. Full year revenue has increased from $41 million in 2023, to $386 million in 2024, and $4.6 billion in 2025. Q2 of 2026 was by far the largest quarter in the filing, coming in at $11.6 billion, up roughly 147% from $4.7 billion in Q1. Q3 results aren’t out yet, but Anthropic reportedly told investors on October 14 that Q3 revenue reached $16.8 billion, up from Q2 but with a less dramatic growth rate.

About 80% of H1 revenue ($13.1 billion) was consumption-based, meaning customers pay for what they use, mostly through the API. The remaining $3.2 billion came from subscriptions.

Q2 2026 produced $974 million of operating income, an 8% operating margin and the first operating profit in any period the filing covers. For the full half, the operating loss was $693 million, versus $2.1 billion a year earlier. The largest cost line was compute and infrastructure, at $8.9 billion, or 55% of revenue.

Overall, there was an $80.7 billion net loss, primarily non-operational in nature. The vast majority came from non-cash convertible note adjustments, which amounted to $72.4 billion. As Anthropic’s private valuation surged, the fair value of its outstanding convertible notes and SAFEs increased, which the company was required to record as a paper loss. Another $8.8 billion came from fair-value changes tied to note purchase agreements with Google and Amazon.

Anthropic had raised $141.1 billion as of June 30. At that date, it held $112.4 billion in cash, plus $19.3 billion in short-term investments. Headcount is about 5,300 as of September 30, up from 940 in December of 2024.

The S-1 leaves the price range blank, but some investors who attended Anthropic’s investor day in San Francisco on October 14 were reportedly discussing a $1.5 trillion price tag, per Reuters. That figure is down from the roughly $2 trillion expected before the Q3 numbers showed growth slowing. For reference, Anthropic’s last private round in May was priced at $965 billion.

At $1.5 trillion, the company would be valued at approximately 22 times annualized Q3 revenue, versus more than 300 times its actual 2025 revenue. The gap illustrates both the speed of Anthropic’s growth and how much of the price rests on growth that hasn’t happened yet.

SpaceX’s S-1 in May gave the market its first look at frontier-lab economics, through xAI as a segment. Anthropic’s filing is the first full set of standalone financials from a pure-play lab. This market moves fast and the read on these numbers will shift, but with OpenAI expected to follow, they’re likely to become the reference point for AI valuations and the deals that follow. This filing also raises the question: how much of today’s growth and margins can be sustained as competition increases, model pricing evolves, and the cost of compute continues to shape the economics?

Mergermarket’s 9M26 report on the first three quarters of 2026 came out, and a few things stood out: global deal volume rose 27% year-over-year to $4.44 trillion across 32,419 deals, making it the second strongest first nine months on record, after the $4.55 trillion peak in 2021. Deal count declined 1% over the same period. The point isn’t a decline, it’s how count essentially stayed flat while value rose considerably. (A note on the numbers: data providers count deals differently. LSEG puts 9M volume at $3.9 trillion and Dealogic at $3.2 trillion, versus Mergermarket’s $4.44 trillion. The direction is the same across all three, but the totals aren’t comparable.)

More than 72% of total deal volume came in the first half, and June alone set a single-month record at $678.1 billion. Q3 was comparatively cool. LSEG data shows third-quarter dealmaking down 41% from the previous quarter, dipping below the $1 trillion mark, while mega deals (valued over $10 billion) dropped from 26 in the second quarter to just 10 in the third.

Megadeals accounted for a record 35% of global volume, reaching $1.54 trillion across 60 transactions. PwC’s mid-year review used a lower $5 billion threshold and found those deals account for nearly half of global value. Strip them out and, by PwC’s count, deal value is down 4% year-over-year. In other words, without the largest deals, the market would be shrinking.

Sponsors spent most of the year selling. Mergermarket puts sponsor investment down 11% to $584.2 billion in the first nine months of 2026, while exits rose 12% to $605.3 billion. Strategic buyers carried the market, accounting for 76% of global deal volume in the first half. Truist Securities, working from Dealogic data, says corporates kept prioritizing long-term strategic moves despite the macro backdrop, though it also notes PE-led and mid-sized deals made up ground in Q3.

The tech sector recorded a total $1.1 trillion in deal volume across 7,987 deals in the first nine months of 2026, a 36% rise compared to the same period in 2025, with four of the top 10 deals involving tech targets. That makes eleven straight quarters at the top.

Looking ahead to Q4, Mergermarket’s Lucinda Guthrie noted that processes kept coming to market after the August slowdown. Her open question is whether uncertainty over growth, geopolitics, and financing will stop those deals from closing.

The broader picture is one we’ve discussed for a number of months now. The M&A market looks exceptionally strong in aggregate, but considerably less so beneath the surface. Large strategic transactions have propelled announced deal value toward record levels, but most of us aren’t feeling the effects. For corporate development teams outside the megadeal market, the headline figures may overstate how strong conditions really are.