Anthropic’s IPO draws heavy demand — and could still fetch a USD 1.5 tn valuation

Anthropic’s tn-USD moment is almost here. The Claude maker’s shares are expected to start trading on the Nasdaq on or around 19 November at a price that would value the whole company at up to USD 1.4 tn — a bit less than some investors had hoped, Reuters reports. It’s only selling a small slice of itself, but that could still bring in as much as USD 64.4 bn, CNBC says. Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, and other tech giants are buying an extra USD 26 bn of its shares.

Investors have put in orders for several times more stock than is for sale, Bloomberg reports, and bankers are now mulling whether to price the shares above the range, which could value Anthropic at USD 1.5 tn or more, the Financial Times adds. Goldman and and Morgan Stanley are expected to price the offering on 18 November.

The timing is tricky. Investors will be watching how Anthropic’s shares sell to judge whether Wall Street is still bullish on AI. They’re a little jumpy right now. AI stocks have only partly bounced back from last week’s post-midterm selloff, as we noted on Tuesday.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: That selloff is already hitting Gulf wallets. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala may be down about USD 17.5 bn on its AI bets since the end of June and Saudi Arabia’s PIF is down about USD 5.64 bn, according to estimates by consultancy GlobalSWF first reported by Semafor.

Investors aren’t about to pull out of AI completely. If anything, lower prices could let long-term investors like these pick up more of some AI stocks. We’ve long argued that any air being let out of the AI bubble might be seen by Gulf sovereign funds as a chance to up their stakes in companies they see building a transformative technology.

Why this matters for the Gulf: Abu Dhabi’s state fund MGX and the Qatar Investment Authority already own pieces of Anthropic, so the company’s performance next week will affect Gulf public money. UAE investors are also leading OpenAI’s next funding round, which is why investors are also watching Anthropic’s IPO for clues about how OpenAI might fare.

OpenAI’s numbers are a mixed bag: It made USD 10 bn in sales in a single quarter for the first time ever, nearly 50% more than the quarter before, Bloomberg reports. But it also lost USD 10.9 bn over the same three months, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Take that with a grain of salt: OpenAI and Anthropic don’t use the same rules about how to count revenue. Anthropic includes the full value of the sales it makes through Amazon, Google, and Microsoft’s clouds, then books its partners’ cuts as an expense. OpenAI’s top line includes only what it keeps after Microsoft gets its cut.