Anthropic Can Now Start Its Roadshow. The Traffic’s Bad.
Anthropic hasn’t set a price yet, but investors think its IPO could fetch a valuation from $1.1 trillion to $1.3 trillion.
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Let’s get this IPO show on the road … just check Google Maps for AI potholes before choosing your route. Anthropic is expected to start formally marketing its planned debut today, 15 days after it filed to go public with the SEC. The Claude-maker is said to have meetings with investors on its calendar starting this week.
That would put it on track to debut on the Nasdaq next week, before Thanksgiving. But it could be a difficult time to convince investors to sit around the AI table and hold hands.
Time to Talk Turkey
Anthropic hasn’t set a price yet, but investors think its IPO could fetch a valuation from $1.1 trillion to $1.3 trillion. That’s down from $1.4 trillion to $1.5 trillion before that and as much as $2 trillion in early October. Those price tags were built on first-half revenue that grew about fourteenfold from a year earlier to $16.3 billion, per Anthropic’s S-1 filing — driven by big business customers asking Claude to help vibe code dashboards.
But as AI sentiment takes a sour turn, Anthropic’s roadshow will need to convince investors that its business model won’t be upended by recent events:
- While the wave in DC was blue, AI stocks turned red last week as investors anticipated an anti-data center policy shift. The Nasdaq’s (relatable) post-Halloween hangover started to let up Friday and Monday as the Nasdaq ticked back up. But the volatility may’ve taken a toll on confidence — and Nvidia’s You Only Live Twice scandal that unfolded over the weekend won’t help rebuild it.
- Nvidia has billions tied up with Anthropic. The chipmaker agreed last November to invest up to $10 billion in the AI lab, which in turn committed to using an initial gigawatt of computing power on Nvidia’s chips. Nvidia’s considering pouring up to another $10 billion into Anthropic’s IPO, Reuters reported in September.
Timing Is Everything: Anthropic isn’t locked into an IPO timeline, but delaying could cost it more than money. Rival OpenAI, freshly valued at $1.25 trillion in a private funding round, has already filed confidentially to go public as soon as next year. Anthropic may want to capitalize on investors’ remaining AI-ppetite well before the ChatGPT-maker arrives. And a lower starting price could set the stock up for a more successful narrative over time.
