Jim Cramer says Anthropic's explosive growth could justify a record-breaking IPO

Anthropic's stunning revenue growth helps justify its $1 trillion-plus valuation ahead of what could become the largest initial public offering in history, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Tuesday.

The Claude developer filed updated IPO paperwork Tuesday outlining plans to offer 825 million shares at $70 to $78 apiece. At the high end, the offering would raise $64.35 billion and value Anthropic at up to $1.405 trillion on a fully diluted basis. The company plans to price its shares Nov. 18 and begin trading the following day. Throw in a separate $26 billion private placement purchased by leading AI companies including Nvidia and Alphabet , and Anthropic's entire haul could exceed SpaceX's raise from its June IPO.

"The fact that this deal is on is bullish for tech and the AI trade," the " Mad Money " host said.

Anthropic reported $33.2 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2026, up 1,206% from a year earlier, according to its updated prospectus. Much of that growth has been driven by enterprise customers, particularly surging adoption of Claude Code, its AI coding agent. "Anthropic's tantalizing growth rate is the key reason why this should be the largest IPO in history," Cramer said.

The company now has more than 11,900 customers spending over $100,000 annually, up from roughly 1,500 at the end of 2025. Existing customers are also spending dramatically more, with Anthropic reporting a net revenue retention rate of approximately 900% at the end of September, meaning customers are spending roughly nine times as much as a year earlier.

While Anthropic is seeing accelerating revenue growth through the first nine months of the year, the company's quarter-over-quarter growth rate seemed to peak in the second quarter, slowing to 47% in the third quarter from 144% in Q2. "To some extent, it's the law of large numbers at work, and let's be clear that 47% sequential growth is still very impressive," Cramer said.

While some deceleration is inevitable as the company gets larger, he said that increased competition from OpenAI and the possibility that customers are beginning to scrutinize their AI spending could also be factors. One thing is for sure, Anthropic won't have to jockey for position with OpenAI, which pushed its IPO plans into next year.