NEW YORK (The Thursday Times) — Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, is seeking a valuation of up to about $1.4 trillion in a stock market listing next week that could be the largest ever, with orders reportedly running at about six times the shares on offer.
The San Francisco-based company plans to sell 825 million Class A shares at between $70 and $78 each. It expects to set the final price on Wednesday and to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday, November 19, under the ticker ANT, subject to regulatory clearance.
Anthropic is selling about 801.4 million of the shares, and existing shareholders the remaining 23.6 million, for a total of up to $64.4 billion. A separate $26 billion private placement with Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, TSMC, Broadcom, AMD, and Micron, which are buying non-voting shares at the IPO price, would take the total raised to as much as $90.4 billion.
Bankers have said existing shareholders will get priority, which could leave some new investors with smaller allocations. Some banks on the deal have also refused orders from investors in mainland China and Hong Kong, citing possible US arms-export restrictions, according to people familiar with the matter.
The price range values the company below the $2 trillion some investors were expecting only weeks ago. Borrowing costs have risen, turmoil has hit Nvidia, one of Anthropic’s biggest chip suppliers and investors, and data-centre building has drawn a political backlash in the United States.
Chief executive Dario Amodei, speaking with JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon in New York on Friday, called securing enough computing power without overspending the company’s “deepest business dilemma.” He said the money raised would give Anthropic more room to manage that risk.
“Just the more cash we have on hand, the more buffer we have between those two things,” Amodei said. He also set out a vision of AI speeding up scientific discovery and medicine. “We can have a much more beautiful world… It sounds starry-eyed. It sounds crazy. I really do believe it.”
Anthropic’s filing shows revenue of $33.2 billion in the first nine months of this year and an operating loss of $1.3 billion, down from $5.2 billion a year earlier. It has committed to spend $895.4 billion, mostly on computing power and infrastructure, with $69.8 billion of that due in the next 12 months.
The prospectus lists risks including a narrow customer base and the possibility that runaway AI could pose “existential risks to humanity.” The company warned investors earlier this month that it may soon cross its own threshold for AI that speeds up the building of AI.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading a group of 19 banks on the deal, with JPMorgan handling sales to US retail investors. Anthropic is also fighting a legal battle with the Pentagon, which has designated it a supply-chain risk.
