Anthropic sets IPO range valuing Claude maker at up to $1.4 trillion

Anthropic on Tuesday set a price range of $70 to $78 a share for its initial public offering, a sale that could value the Claude maker at up to $1.404 trillion when all of its shares are counted, TechCrunch reported.

The range puts Anthropic on course for one of the biggest stock sales ever. The company plans to sell 825 million Class A shares and raise $57.75 billion to $64.35 billion. Counting a separate stock sale to seven technology companies, it could raise up to $100 billion, which would top the $86 billion SpaceX raised in June and make it the largest IPO in history, The New York Times reported.

The terms are set out in the second amendment to Anthropic's registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed Tuesday. The company itself is selling 801,351,354 of the shares, and existing stockholders are selling the other 23,648,646. Anthropic has applied to list its Class A stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT. Underwriters led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have an option to buy up to 123.75 million more shares from the company.

The valuation is lower than the $2 trillion figure bankers floated this summer, the Times said. The Times put the range at $1.26 trillion to $1.41 trillion on a fully counted basis, a large sum for a company founded in 2021.

Seven of the biggest names in chips and cloud computing have agreed to buy $26.0 billion of nonvoting Class N stock at the IPO price in a private placement that closes right after the offering. Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Google, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC are the buyers. At the $74.00 midpoint of the range, Google and Nvidia would each pay about $10.0 billion, AMD about $2.5 billion, Broadcom, Micron and Microsoft about $1.0 billion apiece, and TSMC about $500 million, the filing shows. Some Anthropic directors and their affiliated entities have also said they may buy up to $303 million of stock in the offering.

Together, the IPO and the private placement would bring Anthropic net proceeds of about $84.6 billion at the midpoint, or about $93.7 billion if the underwriters buy the extra shares, according to the filing.

Anthropic's revenue reached $17.0 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30, up from zero when Claude launched commercially in the first quarter of 2023, the filing says. Revenue for the first nine months of the year totaled $33.2 billion, while the company posted a net loss of $104 billion over the same stretch, TechCrunch reported. Anthropic carries compute and infrastructure commitments of $900.9 billion and holds nearly $132 billion in cash and short-term investments.

The customer base has grown quickly. Customers bringing in $100,000 or more in trailing revenue rose to more than 11,900 as of Sept. 30, from more than 950 a year earlier. The company's run-rate revenue, an annualized figure built from recent usage and subscriptions, was about $81 billion as of Oct. 31, up $10 billion from Sept. 30. The filing cautions that run-rate revenue is not a forecast.

Buyers of Class A stock will have limited say over the company. Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, so its board must balance shareholder returns with the purpose written into its charter, "the responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity." A single Class F share, held by an entity owned by Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei, President Daniela Amodei and five other co-founders, will carry 50.1% of the voting power. The company's Long-Term Benefit Trust elects directors who make up a board majority, and Anthropic will be a controlled company under Nasdaq rules.

The offering arrives at a volatile moment for the stock market, with wild swings after the midterm elections, the Times reported. Some institutional investors had pushed for a valuation below the $1.5 trillion target discussed as recently as last week, according to a TechCrunch summary of reporting by The Wall Street Journal. OpenAI, Anthropic's biggest rival, was reportedly valued at $1.25 trillion last week after raising $11 billion, short of the $20 billion it first sought.

The Times said the listing will serve as a test of the AI boom. Citing the Journal, The Verge reported that Anthropic is "aiming for its shares to start trading Thursday or Friday next week." CNBC put the Nasdaq debut close to Nov. 19, TechCrunch said.