Anthropic’s expected stock market debut could value the company at about $1.4 trillion. That is below the figures investors discussed in recent months.
According to Reuters, the Claude maker emailed bankers on Monday with a price range of $70 to $80 per share. It later redacted the message and said it would announce the correct pricing soon.
The retracted filing showed plans to sell 867 million shares. At the top of the range, that would raise up to $69.3 billion.
How the Valuation Has Shifted
Futurum Equities chief market strategist Shay Boloor calculated an implied valuation of around $1.4 trillion from those numbers. Investors had expected a target of about $1.5 trillion just a week ago.
A valuation of roughly $2 trillion had been floated months ago, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal reported that the final figure may fall well short of that level.
Some major backers pushed for a lower valuation after a sharp selloff in AI stocks on Thursday. The Nasdaq has since rebounded, which the Journal said likely supports the IPO plans.
Anthropic has a private market valuation of $1.46 trillion, according to Nasdaq Private Market. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits for its unlisted shares was “bearish” at last check.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday the listing will be a crucial test of investor confidence in AI. “Without it, I don’t see how the AI-related stocks can make a real recovery,” he said.
Valuation expert Aswath Damodaran wrote in a Monday blog post that the market is becoming more discerning. He said investors are no longer marking all AI stocks up or down in the same way.
Separately, research firm SemiAnalysis gave high marks to Anthropic’s new flagship model, Fable 5.2. It said the model is much better at chip design, software engineering, biology and material science.
Revenue, Losses and Spending
Anthropic reported roughly $17 billion in third-quarter revenue in an S-1 update published last month. That was up about 1,127% from the same quarter a year earlier.
Growth has slowed from quarter to quarter, though. Sales rose 47% sequentially, down from 144% in the second quarter and 132% in the first.
The company posted a net loss of $23.29 billion for the third quarter. It reported an operating loss of $567 million, compared with a $974 million operating profit in the second quarter.
Anthropic disclosed spending commitments totaling $895.4 billion that stretch as far as 2045. Nearly half is due by December 2030, including about $69.8 billion in the 12 months after Sept. 30.
The company said it has $146.6 billion in cash and other liquid assets. The top of its planned IPO raise, $69.3 billion, is close to the amount it is due to spend over the next 12 months.
Anthropic could still delay the listing and wait for better market conditions. The Journal said doing so would risk sparking panic in the market.
The company has investor meetings lined up this week, according to the Journal. It is aiming for its shares to begin trading Thursday or Friday next week, with a pricing update expected soon.
