Anthropic's $45B Compute Deal, Zoom Stake, IPO Odds Surge

Three developments landed Tuesday evening that collectively tighten Anthropic’s pre-IPO narrative: a massive infrastructure commitment, a rising mark on a strategic investor’s books, and a shift in public market sentiment that puts Anthropic ahead of SpaceX in IPO betting odds.

Key points

• Anthropic signed a multi-year, $45 billion agreement with Nscale to rent hundreds of megawatts of GPU capacity at Nscale’s West Virginia data center.
• Zoom’s Anthropic stake has been revalued at $3.13 billion, a figure that now meaningfully influences Zoom’s reported investment gains.
• Betting markets now favor Anthropic over SpaceX to produce 2026’s largest IPO, with an expected October listing and an estimated $1 to $2 trillion valuation.
• The Nscale deal is the latest in a pattern of large compute commitments Anthropic has made as it prepares for a public offering.
• The combination of secured infrastructure and rising third-party valuations strengthens the story Anthropic will bring to public market investors.

What does a $45 billion compute rental actually signal?

The Nscale deal is striking for its scale. At $45 billion over multiple years, it ranks among the largest infrastructure capacity agreements any AI company has disclosed. The structure is a rental, not an ownership play, which means Anthropic avoids the capital expenditure of building its own data centers while locking in guaranteed access to hundreds of megawatts at Nscale’s West Virginia facility.

For prospective IPO investors, the deal cuts two ways. On one hand, it demonstrates that Anthropic has the financial backing to commit to compute at this level, and that it is actively building the infrastructure runway needed to scale training and inference. On the other, a long-term rental obligation of this size is a fixed cost that will appear prominently on any S-1. Investors will want to understand the contract terms, break clauses, and how the capacity ramps against projected revenue growth.

The deal also continues a pattern. Anthropic has been accumulating compute commitments at a notable pace in the lead-up to its anticipated listing, suggesting management views locked-in capacity as a competitive moat worth paying for ahead of the public market scrutiny that comes with an IPO.

How does Zoom’s $3.13 billion mark fit the picture?

Zoom’s revalued stake offers an independent data point on where Anthropic’s equity is trading in secondary and strategic markets. According to Bloomberg, the $3.13 billion figure is now a material component of Zoom’s investment gains, which tells you something about how much Anthropic’s implied valuation has moved since Zoom first took its position.

Zoom is not a traditional venture investor, and its stake reflects a strategic AI partnership as much as a financial bet. The fact that the mark has grown to this level adds credibility to the $1 to $2 trillion IPO valuation range that betting markets and analysts are discussing. Third-party corporate holders tend to mark conservatively, so a $3.13 billion figure from Zoom suggests the private market consensus on Anthropic’s total equity value is substantial.

Why have betting markets shifted toward Anthropic over SpaceX?

According to Forbes, Anthropic has overtaken SpaceX in prediction markets as the favorite for 2026’s largest IPO, with an October listing window cited as the expected timeline. The $1 to $2 trillion valuation range attached to that scenario is wide, but even the low end would place Anthropic among the largest tech debuts on record.

The shift in odds is notable because SpaceX has long been the default answer for any question about a blockbuster private-company listing. Anthropic displacing it in market sentiment reflects how much the AI funding cycle has compressed the time between startup formation and IPO-scale valuations. It also reflects genuine uncertainty about SpaceX’s listing timeline, which has not been publicly confirmed.

Prediction markets are not a reliable valuation tool, and the $1 to $2 trillion range covers enough ground to be almost any outcome. What the odds do capture is directional investor appetite, and right now that appetite is tilting toward AI over aerospace. Whether Anthropic can sustain that sentiment through an actual roadshow, with a prospectus that includes the Nscale obligation and the previously reported $1.5 billion copyright settlement as disclosed risk factors, is the open question heading into the autumn window.