Fresh reports indicate that OpenAI's rival Anthropic is bolstering its financial reserves ahead of a potential public listing.

Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter on Tuesday, reported that Anthropic is looking to expand a revolving credit facility to over $10 billion, potentially exceeding an earlier target of around that same amount. As the company gears up for its highly anticipated IPO, multiple banks are vying to participate in this financing round, hoping to secure underwriting roles in the eventual public offering.

The revolving credit line is still under negotiation, and Anthropic may ultimately keep the facility at roughly $10 billion or even below that goal. Under the current invitation plan, the most active banks in the credit facility would each commit to lending about $1.25 billion, a second tier of banks around $1 billion, and other less involved lenders at $750 million or less.

For banks, higher committed loan amounts typically translate into larger fees, and with major capital market transactions looming, rankings in syndicated loans often correspond to more prominent roles in future IPO deals.

If finalized at over $10 billion, this would be at least four times the $2.5 billion five-year revolving credit facility Anthropic secured last year. Banks involved in that prior facility included Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, RBC, and MUFG. Earlier reports noted that Anthropic is working with three of these Wall Street institutions—Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan—to advance its IPO process.

Banks Competing for a Foothold as IPO Approaches

The significance of Anthropic expanding its revolving credit facility may go beyond simply securing backup liquidity.

Bloomberg pointed out that banks are actively pursuing participation in the enlarged credit line, largely due to the growing expectation of an Anthropic IPO. For investment banks, achieving a higher ranking in pre-IPO financing arrangements could boost their chances of playing a more significant role in the underwriting syndicate later.

This pattern is not unique to Anthropic.

For example, SpaceX expanded its revolving credit facility from $1.5 billion to $5 billion in May, shortly before advancing toward a record-breaking IPO. Bloomberg noted that the banks involved in SpaceX's credit expansion were largely the same group that participated in its subsequent IPO.

For Anthropic, this suggests that the significant increase in its revolving credit line can be viewed as part of building deeper financing relationships with Wall Street as it gradually moves toward public markets.

More importantly, Anthropic faces an AI infrastructure cycle with enormous capital demands. A revolving credit facility does not necessarily mean the company will immediately draw all the funds, but it provides a massive standby pool of capital to address computing procurement, data center construction, and other capital expenditure needs.

Data Center Project Secures Additional $15 Billion in Financing, AI Spending Enters Infrastructure Era

Anthropic's recent financing moves are closely tied to its rapidly expanding data center requirements.

In late July, reports indicated that a bank consortium led by Morgan Stanley was in advanced talks to provide a $15 billion loan to data center developer Nexus Data Centers, aimed at building a large data center campus and a 1.6-gigawatt natural gas power plant in Texas.

Under the reported plan, the financing would include a $14 billion bridge loan and a revolving credit facility. Anthropic would serve as the primary tenant for the project, while Google plans to provide billions of dollars in financial guarantees by covering part of Anthropic's lease and power purchase obligations, helping reduce the risk for banks lending to the project. Google is also expected to receive roughly 20% equity in the data center and power project.

This means Anthropic now needs to raise funds not just for computing power required to train large models, but is gradually extending to directly locking in data centers, power, and even chip supplies.

According to reports, Anthropic plans to secure at least 10 gigawatts of data center capacity over the next few years and has already signed more than a dozen preliminary lease agreements with U.S. developers. The Texas project is part of its transition from simply renting cloud computing resources to becoming a direct tenant in data center projects.

This financing model also reflects an increasingly clear trend in the AI industry: infrastructure spending by AI companies is increasingly being facilitated through the balance sheets of tech giants, chip manufacturers, and Wall Street.

Revenue Surge Provides the Backbone for Massive Financing

One of the most critical supports for Anthropic securing such substantial financing before its IPO remains its impressive revenue growth.

Data from last week showed that Anthropic's second-quarter revenue exceeded $11.5 billion, up nearly 14 times year-over-year. Meanwhile, this Monday, reports surfaced that the company told investors its July annualized revenue surpassed $65 billion.

Reuters subsequently cited sources saying that as of the end of July, Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate had exceeded $65 billion, up from $47 billion in May; while at the end of 2025, that figure stood at only about $9 billion.

It is worth noting that $65 billion is an annualized revenue run rate, not the actual revenue realized over the past 12 months. This metric typically annualizes the current sales pace, thus better reflecting the recent growth speed of the business, but it cannot be directly equated to a guaranteed $65 billion in revenue over the coming year.

Even so, Anthropic's growth rate remains extraordinary.

When Anthropic announced a $65 billion financing round in May, the company disclosed an annualized revenue exceeding $47 billion and became one of the world's most valuable startups with a post-money valuation of $965 billion.

Within just a few months, the annualized revenue run rate climbed from $47 billion to over $65 billion, showcasing a strong revenue growth curve ahead of the IPO.

From 'High-Valuation AI Company' to 'Wall Street Financing Machine'

Anthropic is forming an increasingly complete financing chain:

On one end is the high-speed growth driven by products like Claude and Claude Code; on the other end is the continuously expanding demand for computing power, chips, and data centers, with bank loans, tech giant guarantees, and IPO financing tools connecting the middle.

The proposed expansion of the revolving credit facility to over $10 billion, combined with the earlier $15 billion data center project financing, further illustrates that Anthropic is transitioning from an AI startup reliant on equity financing into an enterprise capable of mobilizing large-scale debt capital.

Behind this is also the resurgence of the overall IPO market.

Bloomberg data shows that global IPO proceeds this year have already reached $257 billion, excluding SPACs and other financial instruments, marking the highest annual level since 2021. The potential listings of major AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are becoming the most closely watched components of this IPO wave.

For banks, the competition for Anthropic's credit facility is not merely a lending business.

If Anthropic eventually heads to public markets, whoever secures a higher ranking in pre-IPO financing arrangements could be better positioned in future capital market transactions worth tens of billions or more.

For Wall Street, the AI boom is spreading from 'selling chips and building data centers' to 'providing financing for AI companies' massive capital needs'—and Anthropic is becoming one of the most representative cases of this trend.