Anthropic targets up to $1.4tn valuation in stock market debut

Anthropic, the California‑based developer of the Claude chatbot, has filed to seek a valuation of up to $1.4tn in an initial public offering that is expected to start trading next week, the SEC filing showed on Tuesday.

The prospectus says the company will issue 825 million shares at a price band of $70 to $78, which could raise as much as $64.4bn. A separate private placement will bring in $26bn from cornerstone investors such as Alphabet, Nvidia, Microsoft and AMD, while a greenshoe option could add another $9.7bn, taking the total proceeds to roughly $100bn if the top price is achieved.

Anthropic reported third‑quarter revenue of $17bn, a rise from $1.4bn a year earlier, and said it is on track for about $81bn of annual revenue as of 31 October, $10bn higher than a month earlier. The firm has committed roughly $900bn to computing power, including purchase commitments of more than $70bn for the next 12 months and lease agreements totalling $450bn by 2030 and another $450bn by 2045.

The filing comes as Democrats have taken control of both houses of Congress, prompting worries about future AI regulation and data‑centre restrictions. After the midterm results, the Nasdaq fell 5.5% on Thursday, its biggest one‑day drop in over a year, before recovering slightly. Brian Hopkins, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, 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.”

Chief executive Dario Amodei and six co‑founders will each sell about $260m of shares, with stakes worth more than $18bn at the top of the range. The offering could surpass the $75bn raised by Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO, which valued that company at $1.78tn. A recent Chinese spying scandal involving Nvidia has not yet moved Anthropic’s share price.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the float and forecast annual revenue of $600bn by 2030. Amodei warned in a podcast, “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.