Anthropic filed to sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each on Tuesday, a deal that could value the company at up to $1.4 trillion on a fully diluted basis.
The offering would raise up to $64.4 billion, the company said in its filing on Nov. 10, and the company is launching the roadshow, the marketing tour for a historic share sale.
Anthropic and some of its investors are selling the shares.
One Price Band, Two Valuations
At the top of the range, CBC reported, Anthropic would be worth about $1.4 trillion fully diluted, a count that includes stock options and restricted stock. Without those securities, the market value would be about $1 trillion.
Reuters used a different method. Its calculation from the outstanding shares listed in the filing put the valuation at up to $1.02 trillion, Reuters said in a report carried by The Straits Times. The HuffPost version is the same Reuters account, not a separate confirmation.
A separate $26 billion private placement with cornerstone investors, including Google, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, sits on top of the share sale. Broadcom, Micron Technology, Microsoft and TSMC are also cornerstones. Together the offering would raise up to $90.4 billion.
Certain board members and affiliated entities have indicated interest in buying up to $303 million of shares, according to the filing as reported by Reuters.
Ceiling Falls From $2 Trillion
Investors once expected an October listing at a valuation as high as $2 trillion, Reuters reported. Expectations fell to $1.5 trillion, which was viewed as the high end, as the company’s infrastructure commitments and swings in AI stocks gave prospective buyers pause. Anthropic was last valued at $965 billion in a private funding round.
Some prospective investors questioned whether the earlier $1.5 trillion figure was too high. The lower target is the latest sign of cooling investor appetite for AI, and the listing is a defining test of Wall Street’s faith in the boom it helped ignite.
The company continues to post impressive growth, but investors are increasingly focused on the cost of generating that growth.
She said the move from $2 trillion reflects a change in focus from revenue growth alone to the financial commitments needed to sustain it.
The backdrop is rough. The Nasdaq had its deepest one-day drop in 19 months on Nov. 5, wiping out trillions in market value on fears of more AI scrutiny, particularly of data center construction, after Democratic gains in the U.S. midterm elections, Reuters reported.
Greater oversight and potential regulatory hurdles could complicate the infrastructure buildout underpinning the AI boom. Details of the deal were briefly circulated to banks and then retracted late on Nov. 9, according to emails Reuters saw.
Revenue Rises 47%, Commitments Near $900 Billion
Third-quarter revenue rose 47% from the prior quarter to $16.96 billion, and the net loss narrowed. Growth slowed from the 144% surge of the quarter before. The company credited rapid adoption of its Claude chatbot, including products aimed at health care, financial services and legal work.
Run-rate revenue was roughly $81 billion at Oct. 31, up $10 billion from Sept. 30, according to the filing, as cited by CBC.
Against that sit nearly $900 billion in computing commitments with partners including Amazon and Google. Reuters noted that the growth depends on securing vast future computing capacity, some of it reliant on financing outside the company’s control.
Rivals set the yardstick. SpaceX raised $75 billion in June at a valuation of nearly $1.75 trillion. OpenAI, which is seeking $30 billion, recently secured $11 billion at $1.25 trillion, below the $1.5 trillion it first sought, CBC reported. Anthropic is locked in a fierce battle for market share with OpenAI.
Filing Warns of Risks
The filing speaks of a vision to bring forth an age of miracles
while warning of existential risks to humanity. It also cautions that competitors could build models faster and that AI advances could outpace Anthropic’s safety measures.
The prospectus says Anthropic’s models have in the past behaved, and may in the future behave, in unintended, misaligned, or autonomous ways
, a risk it says could hurt its reputation and results.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley lead the underwriting syndicate. Anthropic expects to trade on the Nasdaq as ANT once the IPO closes, which would make it one of the few major companies to go public this fall, as higher borrowing costs, geopolitical turmoil and rising bond yields weigh on the IPO market.