Anthropic is seeking a $1.4 trillion valuation in its initial public offering later this month, setting a $70 to $78 per-share price range for an offering that could make it the biggest stock market debut in history.
Key Facts
Anthropic will sell 825 million shares, according to a Securities and Exchange commission filing the Claude maker updated on Tuesday.
Of this, selling stockholders, including certain executives and founding members, plan to sell around 23.6 million shares.
The company also plans to raise $26 billion from Class N common stock in a private placement deal with large investors including Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and Alphabet, per the filing.
Anthropic filed for its initial public offering on Oct. 26, planning to list under the ticker “ANT.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that shares are expected to begin trading next Thursday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Key Background
Investors in earlier reports were projecting a valuation of up to $2 trillion, but with the current instability of AI stocks and what the initial Oct. 26 filing revealed about the company’s massive infrastructure commitments, the figure dropped to around $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, with reports of $1.5 trillion on the high end. The company, founded in 2021, has spent over $19 billion on AI infrastructure and signed massive contracts with companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and chipmakers like Nvidia and Broadcom that will total over half a trillion dollars in the next twenty years. The $586 billion in chip and data center commitments through 2045 was the figure as of June, and since then Anthropic has signed another $266 billion in new and amended agreements in addition to other commitments for AMD and Google hardware, which could bring obligations to around $1 trillion through 2045.
Tangent
Anthropic filed at a highly volatile time for AI companies as investors grow increasingly concerned about return on investment for soaring capital expenditures. Those fears have only deepened over the past week as they digest what a Democratic Congress will mean for the future of data centers and the entire AI buildout. The results triggered a massive tech and AI-driven selloff on Thursday, putting chipmakers on track for their worst day since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The stocks began to recover on Friday and into this week, with almost all of the “Magnificent Seven” companies up on Monday—the exception being Nvidia, which fell 5% on news that the company is investigating CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Investors will now be watching for the start of heightened political and legislative pushback on data centers, in addition to strong return on investment in companies’ earnings reports and further indications that the Fed will hike interest rates.
Big Number
$161 billion. This is the size of the deal Anthropic made with Broadcom for its chips and infrastructure, marking its largest contract. Other large commitments include a $114.5 billion cloud computing and chip contract with Google and a $110 billion cloud computing contract with Amazon.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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