Anthropic targets valuation of up to US$1.4 trillion

Anthropic had been expected to raise up to US$100b, which would have made it the largest IPO on record.

Even at the top of its price range, the offering would fall short of the record set by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which raised US$86b in its June IPO at a valuation of US$1.77t.

Anthropic has been aiming to go public the week of November 16, and reports said its shares would begin trading on November 19.

Anthropic’s listing is “just another chapter” in investors’ worries over the cost of the AI buildout and how it gets financed, Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth Management, told AFP.

“But at the end of the day, I think there are three massive companies that investors have wanted to be part of for the last three years and that’s SpaceX for sure, Anthropic is next, and perhaps next year OpenAI,” he said.

The listing comes as Wall Street digests the results of the US midterm elections, in which Democrats, who are more wary of AI, won control of both chambers of Congress and have vowed to put the brakes on US President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The slide has brought volatility to shares of companies linked to the AI boom, with AI chip-maker Nvidia particularly in focus after chief executive Jensen Huang was caught up in a spy scandal.

The company’s revenue reached US$17b in the third quarter, up from US$1.4b a year earlier, according to the filing.

Its annualised run-rate revenue was about US$81b as of October 31, up US$10b from the end of September, the company said. This figure describes how much the company expects in a year based on current revenue.

Estimates in recent months had put Anthropic’s valuation as high as US$2t, but they have slipped with a slide in AI stocks on Wall Street.

Anthropic’s IPO filing devotes extensive space to the technology’s risks, including concerns that advanced AI systems “could pose catastrophic or existential risks to society if not developed and deployed responsibly”.

The company also warns that its public positions on AI regulation and safety could expose it to “political backlash, or disproportionate regulatory action”.

This referred to feuds with the Trump White House. The Pentagon has labelled Anthropic a national security risk after the company refused to lift restrictions on military use of its technology.

Its stratospheric costs have also been underlined, with Anthropic committing hundreds of billions of dollars to computing capacity. It warned that it must make many of those payments even if demand falls short.

Under the governance structure laid out in the filings, the seven co-founders, led by chief executive Dario Amodei and his sister, president Daniela Amodei, will keep just over half of shareholder votes after the listing, so outside investors cannot outvote them.

– AFP

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