Anthropic sets IPO range at $70 to $78 a share, eyeing a $1.4 trillion value

Anthropic is pressing ahead with its stock market debut, setting a price range of $70 to $78 a share for its initial public offering. At the top of that range, the company behind the Claude chatbot would be valued at about $1.404 trillion on a fully diluted basis.

The terms came Tuesday in an updated IPO filing. Anthropic plans to sell 825 million Class A shares, which would raise between $57.75 billion and $64.35 billion depending on where the final price lands.

The timing takes some nerve. The filing follows one of the largest sell-offs the Nasdaq has seen and a broader retreat by investors from AI bets. Many companies would wait for calmer markets. Anthropic appears to have decided that a lower price now is better than an uncertain window later.

CNBC reported that the company aims to begin trading on the Nasdaq around Nov. 19 under the ticker "ANT." The Wall Street Journal, which reported Monday that Anthropic would move forward despite the turbulence, said trading could start on Thursday or Friday of next week, which would be Nov. 19 or 20.

A lower target than the company once floated

The $1.404 trillion figure is high by any normal standard, but it is a step down from earlier ambitions. A few months ago, the company was reportedly aiming for a $2 trillion valuation. As recently as last week, according to the Journal, the target under discussion was $1.5 trillion, and some institutional investors were pushing for a number below that.

The range Anthropic picked lands under the $1.5 trillion mark, which reads like a concession to those buyers. It is still a big step up from the private market. Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in a fundraising round in May, so the top of the IPO range would mean roughly a 45% gain in about six months.

The comparison investors will make first is with OpenAI, Anthropic's main rival. OpenAI was reportedly valued at $1.25 trillion last week after raising $11 billion, a little more than half of the $20 billion it had first set out to raise. If Anthropic prices near the top of its range, it would be worth more than OpenAI on paper. Given how OpenAI's own round came up short, that outcome is far from guaranteed, and the gap between the two will say a lot about which company investors think is better positioned.

That makes the deal more than a single company's financing. Investors are treating Anthropic's valuation as a reading on the strength of the AI boom, and a weak reception would be noticed well beyond the company.

A $26 billion side deal with suppliers and partners

Alongside the public offering, Anthropic agreed to sell $26 billion of non-voting Class N stock in a private sale at the IPO price. The buyers are AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC. Google and Nvidia are each putting in $10 billion.

Including that private sale, Anthropic estimates net proceeds of between $84.6 billion and $93.7 billion. Its underwriters, a group that includes Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, also have the option to buy up to 123.75 million additional shares at the IPO price, equal to 15% of the base offering.

The list of private buyers deserves a close look. These companies design chips, manufacture them, supply memory or rent out cloud computing, the raw materials Anthropic burns through to train and run its models. Their participation is a strong vote of confidence from the companies that know Anthropic's operations best. It also means a large share of the money flows in from businesses that stand to collect much of Anthropic's future spending. That arrangement ties the AI supply chain more tightly together, which helps when demand is booming and could amplify trouble if it cools.

Fast growth, and losses to match

The filing gives the clearest view yet of Anthropic's finances. Third-quarter revenue reached $17 billion, and revenue for the first nine months of the year totaled $33.2 billion. Simple subtraction shows the company brought in about $16.2 billion in the first half, so it made more in the third quarter alone than in the previous two quarters combined.

That pace is the strongest argument for the valuation. If the third quarter's revenue rate held for a full year, it would come to about $68 billion, putting the top of the IPO range at roughly 20 times that figure. Few companies of this size have grown this quickly.

The costs are just as striking. Anthropic reported a net loss of $104 billion for the nine months, more than three times its revenue over the same stretch. Its commitments for compute and infrastructure reached $900.9 billion. Against that, it held nearly $132 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Put those numbers side by side and the purpose of the IPO is plain. Even the high end of the expected proceeds would cover a small fraction of the company's long-term infrastructure commitments. The offering buys time and scale, but Anthropic's model depends on revenue continuing to climb fast enough to catch up with spending that is already locked in. Public investors will be backing that bet with far less information about future demand than about past costs.

Public shareholders, private control

Buyers of Class A shares will get a stake in Anthropic's economics but little say in how it is run. Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, a structure that commits a company to a stated public mission alongside profit. Its founders hold a Class F share carrying 50.1% of the voting power, and the company's Long-Term Benefit Trust will elect a majority of the board.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers who put AI safety at the center of the company's identity, and the governance setup reflects that. The trust was designed to keep the mission insulated from short-term commercial pressure. For a company asking the public for more than $57 billion, the setup goes further than the dual-class structures common among founder-led tech companies, which typically leave outside shareholders at least some voting power.

There is a reasonable case for it. A lab that argues its technology carries serious risks would undercut its own message by handing control to whoever buys the most stock. The tradeoff is accountability. If public shareholders disagree with how Anthropic spends its hundreds of billions in commitments, they will have few tools beyond selling their shares.

The next marker is the final price, expected shortly before trading begins around Nov. 19. With OpenAI's latest round falling short of its goal and the $2 trillion talk already abandoned, where Anthropic lands within its $70 to $78 range will show how much investors are still willing to pay for AI's biggest names.