Claude chatbot developer had been reported to be aiming for $2tn IPO on Wall Street before investors cooled on AI
Anthropic is seeking a valuation of up to $1.4tn (£1.1tn) in its imminent stock market flotation, short of the $2tn that had been expected before investors started to question the durability of the AI boom.
The developer of the Claude chatbot was widely reported to be targeting a $2tn initial public offering on Wall Street but its sights have been set lower, according to a US regulatory filing on Tuesday.
Anthropic is aiming to raise up to $64.4bn by selling 825m shares in the IPO priced up to $78 a share. The California-based company will also raise a further $26bn via a separate private placement deal with cornerstone investors including the Google parent, Alphabet, and the chipmaker Nvidia.
An extra $9.7bn could be raised from a so-called greenshoe offering, which kicks in if investor demand is high and would take the total amount raised by Anthropic to approximately $100bn if the shares sold at the top end of the price range.
At the upper bracket of the $70-$78 per share price range, Anthropic would be worth $1.4tn on a fully diluted basis – which means taking into account all the common shares in the company in existence, including employee stock options.
Trading in Anthropic shares is expected to begin next week.
Investor jitters over the AI boom were crystallised last week when the US midterm elections produced victories for datacentre opponents. This has added to already existing concerns, such as how quickly – or if at all – companies can generate a return on their spending on AI infrastructure.
Brian Hopkins, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, said the midterm elections gave investors the chance to correct valuations that they were beginning to have concerns about, because of worries about the financial sustainability of the AI build-out. The election results brought those concerns to a head, Hopkins said. “The market needed an excuse to correct itself a little bit in terms of valuations,” he said. “The US election spook is what has caused it.” As a consequence, Anthropic’s valuation has also been lowered from an anticipated $2tn, he added.
The largest ever stock market listing is Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which joined the US stock market with a valuation of $1.78tn, raising $75bn. The company, whose assets include Musk’s rocket launch business and the X social media platform, is now worth just under $2tn.
However, the $100bn that could be raised in the Anthropic offering will exceed the amount raised by SpaceX.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, is selling about $260m worth of shares in the float, as is each of his six fellow co-founders. At the top of the price range the co-founders’ stakes will be worth more than $18bn each.
A Chinese spying scandal enveloping Nvidia, a cornerstone company for AI investors, also threatens to overshadow the industry but has not affected share prices so far – other than Nvidia’s.
The updated Anthropic filing stated that the company’s annual revenue is now running at $81bn as of 31 October, up $10bn from the previous month.
Anthropic’s main expenditure is on the computing power, from data centres, that is key to developing and operating its AI systems. According to its prospectus, Anthropic has compute purchase commitments and lease agreements of more than $70bn over the next 12 months and more than $450bn by 2030, with a further $450bn due by 2045.
In a podcast appearance earlier this year, Anthropic’s Amodei explained how compute commitments had to be matched by revenue growth.
“I could buy $1tn of compute that starts at the end of 2027. If my revenue is not $1tn, if it’s even $800bn, there’s no force on earth, there’s no hedge on earth, that could stop me from going bankrupt,” he told podcaster Dwarkesh Patel.
On Tuesday the Financial Times reported that the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which is leading the float along with Morgan Stanley, is forecasting Anthropic will generate annual revenues of $600bn by 2030.
