Nvidia May Invest Up to $10 Billion in Anthropic’s $2.3 Trillion IPO
NVIDIA is reportedly in talks to anchor what could become the largest IPO in market history, and the logic behind the check reveals exactly how the chipmaker plans to dominate AI for the next decade.
Reuters reports that NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) is in talks to commit up to $10 billion as an anchor investor in Anthropic’s initial public offering, a deal that could price the AI lab at as much as $2.3 trillion and rank as the largest listing in market history. For a chipmaker whose data center engine already runs on Anthropic demand, the check is less a bet than a lock.
A $10 Billion Anchor Check
The figure is up to $10 billion, still in talks, and not yet finalized, tied to an Anthropic IPO that Reuters says is targeted to price before the U.S. midterm elections in November 2026. Anthropic is reportedly seeking to raise as much as $100 billion, with a valuation that could be as high as $2.3 trillion.
What Anthropic Access Buys NVIDIA
NVIDIA has the balance sheet to write this check without straining. CFO Colette Kress told analysts on the Q2 FY2027 call that NVIDIA has already “invested nearly 50 billion in the Frontier AI Labs” and framed that outlay as “a small fraction of our expected free cash flow over the same period.” Free cash flow in the quarter alone was $21.34 billion, up 58.43%, and the company returned roughly $26.0 billion to shareholders via buybacks and dividends with about $99.0 billion remaining under its repurchase authorization.
Anthropic’s fundamentals back the check. Its annualized revenue run rate climbed above $65 billion by the end of July 2026, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025, with projections calling for roughly $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue in 2028. NVIDIA has already disclosed that Anthropic is initially adopting 1 gigawatt of compute capacity on Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems. Anchoring the IPO deepens that commercial rope.
Market Reaction
Shares closed at $218.29 on September 11, 2026, essentially flat on the day at -0.03%. Over the past week the stock is down 5.13% and off 2.48% over the past month, though it remains up 17.32% year to date and 23.5% over one year. Retail response to the Anthropic headline turned bullish to very bullish on wallstreetbets, with a composite Reddit sentiment score of 78 in the most recent Saturday reading.
Bull Case
The $10 billion check tightens the loop between compute supply and compute demand at exactly the moment NVIDIA is telling investors that supply is the ceiling. CEO Jensen Huang said “At this moment, we have supply for 70%. We have more supply than 70%, but about 70%. Our demand is much higher than that.” NVIDIA guided Q3 FY2027 revenue to $108.0 billion plus or minus 2%, coming off a quarter that delivered $96.22 billion in revenue, up 105.8% YoY, and Data Center revenue of $89.02 billion, up 117% YoY. Kress said management expects fiscal 2028 revenue to grow approximately 70% year over year.
Backing Anthropic converts a customer into an equity stake in a company already generating multi-billion-dollar run-rate revenue on NVIDIA silicon. Kress framed the logic plainly: NVIDIA’s compute is “fungible and durable and can be redeployed to support other customers,” and the AI-lab commitments are expected to drive “roughly a quarter of our business next year.” Profitability underwrites the strategy: gross margin was 75.0% non-GAAP, operating margin 60.38%, and return on equity 101.49%. Analyst coverage skews the same direction, with 57 Buy ratings versus 2 Hold and 1 Sell and an average target of $327.65.
Bottom Line
For long-term holders, the $10 billion figure matters because it signals how NVIDIA plans to spend the cash it generates: on ecosystem equity that reinforces GPU consumption for a decade. Anthropic joins OpenAI’s roughly 12 gigawatts of NVIDIA compute commitments and financing partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion for AI infrastructure. The near-term catalyst is management’s own guide: $108 billion in Q3 FY2027 revenue, a number that will show whether Huang’s line that “compute is revenue” holds through year-end. If Anthropic prints at $2.3 trillion, NVIDIA will have written the smallest large check in AI history.
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