Jim Cramer says Anthropic's IPO could make or break the AI trade. Here's why

Anthropic's upcoming initial public offering could be a crucial test of investor confidence in the artificial intelligence trade, CNBC's Jim Cramer said on Monday.

"Without it, I don't see how the AI-related stocks can make a real recovery," the " Mad Money " host said, exactly two weeks after the Claude developer filed its S-1 IPO paperwork. Despite the recent sell-off in AI stocks, Anthropic is reportedly moving ahead with its IPO plans. The company is expected to meet with major investors this week and is targeting a trading debut as early as Thursday or Friday of next week, the Wall Street Journal reported , citing people familiar with the matter. "I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this could be one of the most consequential IPOs in history."

Cramer explained that the billions of dollars being spent on AI chips and data centers ultimately depend on a handful of AI developers, including Anthropic, generating enough revenue to justify those investments.

"Anthropic is important because it is one of just a few companies at the end of the food chain for all of the AI data center investments that we've seen, so it is one of the few companies that, ultimately, needs to make money from all of this investment spending," Cramer said. "If it can't do that, or if it cannot convince enough investors that it will do so, then it's tough to justify all of the AI investments that are being made today."

Cramer pointed to SpaceX as an example of how interconnected the AI trade has become. Much of the Elon Musk rocket and AI company's recent revenue growth has come from renting computing capacity to customers, including Alphabet's Google and Anthropic. Google pays roughly $900 million a month for that capacity, while Anthropic's commitment has grown from an initial $1.25 billion monthly to more than $3 billion, according to its IPO prospectus.

Those contracts allow for SpaceX's massive purchases of Nvidia chips. "But if an Anthropic deal fails?" Cramer said. "Then Anthropic wouldn't have the cash to fulfill its contracts, and you'd have to take down estimates for both SpaceX and Nvidia, along with a whole host of other compute providers to Anthropic, and their suppliers." Not to mention, Alphabet, Amazon , and Nvidia have all invested in Anthropic, making their earnings sensitive to changes in the AI developer's valuation.