IPO

Published on
18/09/2026 – 12:25 GMT+2

Britain’s most valuable private company has clarified where it intends to sell its shares.

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Nik Storonsky, Revolut’s founder and CEO, told French newspaper Les Echos on Thursday that the group is weighing a dual listing across the London Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, confirming earlier media reports.

A spokesperson for Revolut confirmed the report to Euronews.

The US remains Storonsky preference, and he was candid about why, stating that “it’s a larger market. It includes institutional investors, hedge funds, fund managers and a considerable number of individual investors.”

“So we have the choice between selling in a small market with few buyers, or in a gigantic market with a huge number of buyers who will compete fiercely for our shares,” Storonsky added.

The comments mark a softening.

The Revolut CEO argued in 2024 that the London Stock Exchange simply could not compete with American venues, citing thin liquidity and the UK’s 0.5% stamp duty on share purchases, and had appeared to rule out listing at home altogether.

The London exchange has endured a prolonged drought of new listings, with companies either staying private or heading west. For instance, payments group Wise moved its primary listing to New York this year, and AstraZeneca has also expanded its presence in the US.

Revolut going public at anything near its current valuation would make it one of Britain’s largest listed companies, potentially worth more than Barclays or NatWest.

A secondary share sale in July valued the business at roughly $115 billion (€100bn), up from $75 billion (€65bn) in November.

No date for the IPO yet

When asked by Euronews about internal discussions regarding a timeline for the IPO, the spokesperson refused to comment, but pointed to a previous interview with Bloomberg in April of this year where the Revolut CEO stated “in two years time, but it depends on how good the market is.”

Progress as certainly been made as the company has spent this year assembling the regulatory foundations a listing will require.

It secured a full UK banking licence in March after a long wait that Storonsky has publicly blamed on British regulators, obtained a French licence in August, received conditional approval for a US national bank charter this month, and announced on Wednesday that it had applied for a Swiss licence alongside plans to invest more than 150 million Swiss francs (€158m) there.

Revolut has not stated which venue would host the primary listing, whether the two would happen simultaneously, or when formal preparations might begin.

Crypto traders are assigning Anthropic an implied valuation more than $1 trillion (€866bn) above its last funding-round price, before public investors have even seen its accounts.

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The company behind Claude has filed its IPO paperwork confidentially and chosen Nasdaq for its initial public offering.

What remains is the public release of its S-1 filing, the official registration package that a US company submits to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Until it arrives, the only live price on Anthropic comes from a corner of the crypto market where pre-IPO speculation runs rampant, and it currently sits far above anything the company has ever agreed with an investor.

The last agreed valuation was $965 billion (€836bn), set when a $65 billion (€56bn) Series H round closed at the end of May, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia.

That was already an extraordinary figure for a company founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei, and it followed a valuation of $61.5 billion (€53.3bn) barely a year earlier, representing a nearly sixteenfold increase in roughly 12 months.

Revenue has moved almost as fast.

Anthropic’s annualised revenue run rate passed $65 billion (€56bn) by the end of July, driven by enterprise adoption of Claude.

The losses are also enormous, reportedly reaching close to $42 billion (€36.4bn) in 2025, reflecting the cost of training frontier models. Amazon has committed to investing as much as $33 billion (€28.6bn) in the company, while Anthropic has committed to spending more than $100 billion (€86.6bn) on AWS technologies over the coming decade.

Given these figures, investors are already aiming considerably higher than the valuation in the last round.

Reports have put the target IPO valuation at $2 trillion (€1.73tn), with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley leading an offering expected to raise more than $60 billion (€52bn).

The market that is already trading

Perpetual futures contracts tracking Anthropic’s pre-IPO valuation are currently trading on Hyperliquid, the largest decentralised derivatives venue, where the implied market capitalisation reached an all-time high of roughly $2.36 trillion (€2.05tn) and sits near $2.15 trillion (€1.86tn) at the time of writing.

That is about 2.2 times the Series H valuation.

Heng Yu Lee, partner at market maker DWF Labs, which is active in these instruments, rejects the suggestion that leverage rather than conviction is driving the premium.

“Whether it’s leveraged or not, everyone trading the pre-IPO market is genuine demand at the price that’s reflected,” he told Euronews, adding that “the premium is pricing in public information that’s available, such as expected revenue numbers and expected market demand for the stock.”

These contracts will also be the first instruments to react when the filing lands, trading around the clock while equity markets are shut.

“At a moment like the S-1 dropping, you typically see volume spike and prices fluctuate heavily as the market digests the information,” Lee explained.

However, the market remains small relative to what it is valuing.

“Currently, the market isn’t super deep, with just $6M in 24-hour volume and $31M in open interest on Hyperliquid,” Lee said, adding that liquidity should improve as the listing approaches, given that more investors are likely to pile in.

Lee is also candid about how much weight the number deserves.

“As of now, I wouldn’t rely too heavily on the absolute pricing as we have yet to have a public S-1,” he stated while clarifying that “the direction of how the prices move typically still accurately reflects the shifting sentiment towards the company as things develop.”

A crowded year for AI listings

Once Anthropic files publicly, it will cement 2026 as the year of AI IPOs.

It started with chipmaker Cerebras Systems, which designs wafer-scale processors pitched as an alternative to Nvidia’s. The firm listed on Nasdaq in May after two false starts, raising $5.55 billion (€4.76bn) at $185 a share, above its revised price range.

The stock opened 89% higher and closed its first day near $311, valuing the company at roughly $67 billion (€58bn) compared with the $23 billion (€20bn) it had been worth three months earlier.

Investor appetite for a credible Nvidia challenger proved fierce, though the enthusiasm cooled quickly after a disappointing first earnings report. Cerebras is currently trading at a valuation of around $43.7 billion (€37.8bn).

Then came SpaceX, which listed in June, raising more than $85 billion (€73.6bn) at a valuation that briefly touched $2.8 trillion (€2.4tn) before falling back to around $1.95 trillion (€1.69tn).

OpenAI was also slated to hold an IPO this year and had already filed confidentially, but has now stepped back entirely. The company has a private valuation of $852 billion (€738bn), set during a $122 billion (€105bn) round in March.

CEO Sam Altman told Fortune on Saturday that listing this year would be “ill-advised”, ruling out 2026 and declining to commit to 2027. He said the company had “a lot of stuff to do” on safety and alignment and that being private made that easier.

Altman’s comments arrived the same day that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier”, arguing that AI companies should deliberately slow the rate at which they improve their most capable models.

Amodei proposed three steps: independent evaluators with employee-level access to frontier systems, coordination on safety standards among labs in democratic countries, and international agreements on the most dangerous categories of use.

Anthropic has already committed unilaterally to the first, and the endorsements came quickly, with Sam Altman saying he agreed on the need to pace the frontier and Elon Musk replying simply: “Dario is right”.

However, US President Donald Trump did not.

In his first public response to the three CEOs, Trump, speaking in Ireland on Sunday, dismissed the argument.

“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump said, describing some warnings as things “that won’t happen”.

Trump has since reiterated that argument in several social media posts.

Likewise, China’s foreign ministry called the warnings “fearmongering”.

Markets registered the exchange, with shares in SoftBank, Kioxia and SK Hynix falling sharply on Monday. Shares in the Japanese and South Korean companies fell more than 6% and 4.3%, respectively.

This leaves Anthropic in an awkward position as it approaches what could be the largest listing ever attempted in public markets.

The company is asking public investors to fund frontier AI development while its founder argues publicly that such development should proceed more slowly.

That is not necessarily a contradiction, since pacing is not stopping, and Anthropic has always argued that safety-focused labs should be at the frontier rather than ceding it.

However, it is a story the S-1 filing will have to tell convincingly, and the risk factors section will be read unusually closely.

Shares in fast-fashion giant Shein fell as much as 10% on their trading debut on Hong Kong’s stock market on Tuesday, before recovering some of their losses, following years of delay to the company’s plans to list publicly and regulatory setbacks in Europe and in the US.

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Shein’s initial public offering opened on 24 August, with the final share price set a week later on 31 August. Trading began the following day, on Tuesday.

The gap reflects standard IPO process, as investors placed their orders over about a week, the banks running the deal then fixed the final price and decided who got shares, and trading opened a few business days later once the exchange gave the final go-ahead.

The listing marks the end of a long search for a stock market willing to take Shein after plans to list in New York and London stalled amid scrutiny over its Chinese supply chains, forcing the company to turn to Hong Kong instead.

New US and EU tariffs on low-cost parcels from China, along with rising shipping costs from the war in Iran, have contributed to Shein’s swing from a $395 million (€340mn) profit to a $99 million (€85mn) loss in the first quarter of this year.

Shein raised about $1.7 billion (€1.46bn), pricing shares at HK$48.56 (€5.33) each, in one of the city’s biggest share sales this year.

“Shein’s Hong Kong listing marks a new starting point,” said Leigh Gui, Shein’s chief financial officer, in a short speech at its listing ceremony.

But in early trading, the shares fell to below HK$44 (€4.83) before losses narrowed.

Tariffs squeeze profits

Shein has built its appeal to customers on ultra-fast, affordable fashion, delivered from China to the West within days.

However, the end of “de minimis” tariff exemptions in the US and the European Union has raised duties on low-value parcels from China, including Shein’s products. Higher logistics costs, driven partly by the war in Iran, have also squeezed the company’s low-price business model and profitability.

Tariff costs have forced Shein to raise prices, “cutting into its main advantage,” said Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC Marketing + Technologies.

Back to its roots

Shein, pronounced “she-in,” earlier explored listing its shares in New York and London, and moved its headquarters from China to Singapore in 2021.

But increasingly strict scrutiny by Beijing and by regulators in the US and Europe led it to embrace its Chinese roots and switch to a Hong Kong listing.

Launched in 2012 in China, much of Shein’s operations were in the southern province of Guangdong before it moved its corporate headquarters out of the country.

“Guangdong is Shein’s roots, and the starting point of our journey,” founder Sky Xu said in a speech in February.

Pivoting its focus back to China also highlighted the advantages Shein derives from a supply chain system that “only exists” in Guangdong, said William Ma of GROW Investment Group, referring to its small-batch, fast-response manufacturing model.

Shein has hit other roadblocks in expanding in Europe. In February, the EU launched a probe into the company with a focus on “illegal” products, including alleged child sexual abuse material.

In May, Shein acquired San Francisco-based eco-friendly clothing retailer Everlane, a move some analysts said was not the best fit.

Hong Kong’s IPO boost

The company’s market value was roughly $27 billion (€23.2bn) as it listed in Hong Kong, a fraction of its peak valuation a few years ago.

“Shein has probably missed its golden listing window due to the shift of momentum toward AI and tariffs, which can affect valuations and profitability,” said Gary Ng, a senior economist for Asia Pacific at French bank Natixis.

Still, Shein’s listing is welcome news for Hong Kong, as the Chinese territory makes increasing efforts to hold onto its role as a global financial hub following a downturn in 2023.

Hong Kong’s stock exchange has had a strong year for IPOs, raising more than $40 billion (€34.4bn) so far.

There is also a backlog of companies seeking to list there, said Lorraine Tan at investment research firm Morningstar.