Anthropic Sets IPO Range of $70 to $78, Eyeing Up to $64 Billion
The Claude maker plans to sell 825 million shares on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, implying a fully diluted value of up to about $1.4 trillion.
Anthropic, the San Francisco artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot and models, has set a price range of $70 to $78 per share for its initial public offering. At the top of that range the deal would raise up to $64.35 billion, making it one of the largest stock market debuts on record. The company plans to sell 825 million shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT,” and CNBC reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the shares are expected to be priced on Nov. 18 and begin trading on Nov. 19.
What happened
The terms were set out in an amended registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, according to coverage of the filing. Of the 825 million Class A shares on offer, about 801.4 million are being sold by Anthropic itself and roughly 23.6 million by existing stockholders. Anthropic receives no money from the shares sold by those holders, according to an analysis of the filing by the AI news site MLQ.ai. Underwriters also have a 30-day option to buy up to 123.75 million more shares.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading a syndicate of 22 banks, MLQ.ai reported. CNBC said the order book was already covered across the full price range on an allocable basis, and that institutional demand looks stronger than it was for SpaceX at the same stage of that company’s listing. Anthropic is also aiming to set aside about 20% of the shares for retail investors, CNBC reported, well above the 5% to 10% that is typical for large offerings.
In the prospectus, the founders wrote that “everyone who owns our stock, whether an institution or an individual, becomes part of that effort,” according to CNBC.
Chipmakers and cloud giants buy in
Alongside the public offering, seven technology companies have agreed to buy about $26 billion of a separate class of stock, known as Class N common stock, at the IPO price. CNBC named the buyers as AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC. Those shares will not be registered in the offering and will not be subject to the usual underwriter lock-up agreements that bar insiders from selling for a set period. According to MLQ.ai, Google and Nvidia are each committing about $10 billion, and the banks earn no fee on the placement.
What the valuation means
How much Anthropic is worth depends on which shares are counted. CNBC put the fully diluted valuation at up to $1.405 trillion at the top of the range. That figure includes stock options, unvested stock awards and shares reserved for future employee plans. Counting only the shares that will actually be outstanding after the IPO and the private placement, the implied market value is about $916 billion to $1.02 trillion, MLQ.ai calculated, and it noted that Reuters reported the lower basis.
Either way, the range comes in below some earlier hopes. Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in a Series H funding round in May, CNBC reported. Some investors had once expected a listing near $2 trillion, but CNBC said some now doubt even $1.5 trillion, with one investor calling it a “stretch.”
The financial figures help explain both the excitement and the caution. Revenue for the nine months ended Sept. 30 was $33.24 billion, up about 1,200% from a year earlier, according to CNBC. Run-rate revenue reached about $81 billion at the end of October, up $10 billion from a month earlier. Anthropic also reported a net loss of $104 billion for the nine months, compared with $25.1 billion a year earlier. CNBC said most of that loss came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes and derivative liabilities rather than from day-to-day operations. MLQ.ai also pointed to roughly $895 billion in purchase and lease commitments, mostly for computing power and infrastructure.
Background and what comes next
Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, co-founded the company in 2021 after leaving OpenAI with a small group of researchers. The company sells mainly to businesses. On Nov. 9 it released two new frontier models, Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2, its first since Amodei called for slowing AI development in September, CNBC reported.
The listing would come about five months after Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public in a record offering that raised $85.7 billion. It also arrives at a less friendly moment for the AI industry. CNBC noted that public investors have grown more skeptical of AI spending, partly because rising interest rates could make it more expensive to borrow for data centers. Last week’s midterm elections also brought a Democratic sweep in Congress and ballot measures that could slow the build-out of AI infrastructure.
The final price could still fall outside the range, depending on demand during the investor roadshow. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company is targeting a trading debut on Nov. 19 or 20, according to MLQ.ai.
