Source: Fintech Blueprint
Compiled and organized by BitpushNews
Anthropic could be poised to execute the largest IPO in history, raising over $75 billion.
Reuters reports that Anthropic is arranging a revolving credit facility expected to exceed $10 billion before its IPO.
It is reported that the largest banks have been asked to commit approximately $1.25 billion each, secondary banks around $1 billion, and other banks $750 million or less.
Now is a good time to lend, both nominally and practically—long-term interest rates are rising, which should sustain strong profitability for lending activities; the key is identifying high-quality credit risks. Large technology companies are one such target.
Banks are not only competing to lend to Anthropic, but also to secure the role of underwriter for its IPO. Participating in this lending mechanism could enhance their chances. Anthropic has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Bloomberg subsequently reported that the company expects its offering size to reach or exceed the $75 billion raised by SpaceX.
SpaceX has always been a captivating capital markets story, including the thrill brought by its volatility. Wall Street finds itself once again preparing for this financial bonanza, as banks are putting forward tens of billions of dollars in loans to a company ready to raise hundreds of billions more from public investors.
Anthropic's bank auction
A revolving credit facility is not the same as Anthropic borrowing $10 billion tomorrow. It’s like a massive corporate credit card. The bank commits capital, and Anthropic can draw on it as needed. Anthropic pays fees for having this available liquidity, and additional interest if it actually borrows the funds.
The direct economic benefits of this lending mechanism may be attractive. However, the $1.25 billion revolving credit commitment will also occupy the balance sheet, require regulatory capital, generate credit risk, and consume significant time from bank executives.
The greater return lies in the subsequent IPO.
If Anthropic completes an IPO exceeding $75 billion, it will create one of the largest underwriting deals in history. The winning banks will have the opportunity to secure follow-on equity offerings, bond issuances, acquisitions, derivatives, asset management, and future lending business.
SpaceX raised approximately $75 billion, the largest IPO in history.
Historically, the underwriting spread for IPOs in the U.S. mid-market has precisely centered at 7%.
The SEC found that over 96% of mid-sized IPOs between 2001 and 2016 paid this fee. SpaceX has greater negotiating power.
It is reported that its underwriting fees were negotiated below 0.75%. However, due to the massive transaction size, the banks are still expected to share approximately $500 million in fees. This represents a remarkable operating leverage effect.
If Anthropic raises another $7.5 billion in funding, matching SpaceX, and pays fees at a similarly high level, Wall Street could see another $500 million to $2 billion fee pool.
But the IPO is just the first day.
Loans have always been a pathway into investment banking.
For decades, economists have studied the interaction between lending and underwriting.
Steven Drucker and Manju Puri found evidence that combining the two creates genuine information efficiency for issuers. They also found that lending helps underwriters build relationships, increasing their likelihood of securing current and future business.
There are two ways to interpret this:
A cynical claim is that banks use their balance sheets to purchase investment banking licenses.
A more optimistic view is that loans generate information.
A bank that has committed $12.5 billion to Anthropic must understand its cash flow, cost base, liquidity needs, downside scenarios, and future funding requirements. This knowledge is also helpful when attempting to price and distribute $75 billion in Anthropic equity.
Another study by the Journal of Finance found that companies with pre-IPO banking relationships had IPO prices that were approximately 17% lower than those without such relationships.
Therefore, this relationship can create value for both parties—the bank may be more likely to win the mandate, and Anthropic may gain a more informed underwriter.
Price for relationships
Assume a top-tier bank agrees to the $1.25 billion commitment mentioned in the Anthropic report.
We do not know Anthropic’s actual loan spread, commitment fee, or utilization rate, so the figures below are for illustrative purposes only. Assume a 25% utilization rate, a spread of 1.5% on borrowed funds, and a fee of 0.25% on unused amounts.
The bank will earn approximately $4.68 million annually from the $310 million utilized, and $2.35 million from the $940 million unused. Therefore, the annual total loan income is approximately $7 million, before deducting funding costs, credit losses, operating expenses, and funding costs.
Now, assume that participating in this loan mechanism increases the probability of the bank winning the $50 million IPO fee allocation from 20% to 60%.
The incremental expected value is 40% × $50M = $20M. This is already approximately three times the example annual total loan revenue.
This is a simplified model and not an estimate of the economic viability of Anthropic's actual loan mechanism.
But this illustrates why measuring transactions solely by loan interest misses most of the value. Banks are effectively calculating customer lifetime value.
Additionally, as a point of reference, $1.25 billion is the amount Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX (one of its computing partners) monthly for computing services until May 2029.
A legal red line on Wall Street that cannot be crossed
Banks cannot directly tell Anthropic, "Give us the IPO, and we'll give you $1.25 billion."
U.S. banking laws generally prohibit banks from conditioning the provision of credit on a customer purchasing certain other services from the bank or its affiliates. However, banks may still establish relationships with the expectation of securing additional business in the future—this is a necessary component of internal authorization within financial institutions.
The difference is only a few arrows in the diagram, but economically, they may appear very similar.
Artificial intelligence is creating a massive IPO economy
The emergence of Anthropic also coincides with a particularly favorable time for investment banks.
Ernst & Young’s Global IPO Trends Report states that the first half of 2026 will be characterized by large IPOs and AI-related offerings. Its analysis of the U.S. market notes that 12 companies raised over $1 billion in the first half, compared to only four during the same period in 2025.
If capital formation is concentrated in a few large transactions, ranking positions become increasingly dependent on winning these authorized transactions.
Missing Anthropic is not the same as missing a $300 million software IPO.
Balance sheet configuration is part of the budget for investment banking clients.
It’s easy to conclude that banks are buying Anthropic’s IPO by offering cheap financing, but this may not tell the whole story. Research on relationship banking and pricing finds no evidence that universal banks systematically underprice loans to win underwriting business. Banks can also extract value from integrated relationships.
However, in this scenario, Anthropic has exceptional bargaining power.
It allows Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and all other major banks to compete not only on underwriting fees but also on how much balance sheet they are willing to commit before an IPO even begins.
Most discussions about Anthropic's IPO will focus on its valuation, whether its revenue can sustain growth, and whether Claude can maintain its enterprise position.
But the deeper story is about the speed of innovation and the pace of change. A company founded in 2021 has become so valuable that the world’s largest banks are competing to commit over $10 billion of their own balance sheets to deepen their relationship with it.
We are witnessing trillion-dollar enterprises rising from data centers, bringing machine intelligence and human transformation. This may have been said too often, but it is indeed true.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitpushNewsCN
BitPush Telegram community: https://t.me/BitPushCommunity
BitPush TG subscription: https://t.me/bitpush