- Demand is running ahead of the range. Anthropic’s bankers, led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have indicated they expect to raise the share price above the $70 to $78 range set in a filing early Tuesday after receiving strong indications of demand as the roadshow began, which could lift the valuation target to $1.5 trillion or more in the coming days, according to five people familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times.
- The deal could top $100 billion. Anthropic said Tuesday it planned to raise as much as $64 billion in the IPO, with a “greenshoe” option to extend that by almost $10 billion if the deal is oversubscribed, alongside a $26 billion private placement from strategic partners including Google, Nvidia and Microsoft at the IPO price. A higher share price would push total funds raised beyond $100 billion, the FT reported.
- Funding, not valuation, is the priority. Three of the company’s backers told the FT that Anthropic is focused on raising as much as possible to support heavy spending on computing power, rather than maximizing its valuation. Tuesday’s filing implied a fully diluted valuation of $1.26 trillion to $1.41 trillion, and investors have moderated earlier ambitions for a $2 trillion IPO as doubts about the AI boom have mounted.
- A grey market is already forming. One New York brokerage said it was selling “up to $500mn” of Anthropic shares for a venture capital firm at 4% above the eventual IPO price, while another venture group is offering $1.25 billion of shares through a special-purpose vehicle at a $1.5 trillion valuation, according to messages seen by the FT. Anthropic has warned that offers by certain pre-IPO secondary brokers would not be recognized by the company.
What Happened?
Anthropic disclosed on Tuesday that it would target a $1.4 trillion valuation when it lists next week, and bankers began weighing a higher price less than a day later, the FT reported. The company has tried to address concerns about whether revenue can keep pace with plans to spend about $900 billion on computing power and infrastructure in the coming years, telling investors its annualized revenue hit $81 billion in October and its third-quarter revenue was $17 billion. Morningstar analysts said $1.7 trillion was a “fair equity value” but that Anthropic could be priced anywhere between $500 billion and $3 trillion depending on adoption of its tools. Anthropic and Goldman Sachs declined to comment to the FT, and Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond.
Why It Matters?
An upsized price would be a strong signal that public investors are willing to fund the AI build-out even after the post-midterm tech rout, which the FT put at $3.2 trillion. The emphasis on maximizing proceeds rather than valuation underlines how capital-hungry frontier AI has become, with Anthropic’s roughly $900 billion compute plan dwarfing even a $100 billion-plus raise. The secondary offers at a premium to the IPO price show allocation holders betting on a first-day pop, but they also echo side deals seen ahead of SpaceX’s debut in June and raise questions about how orderly early trading will be.
What’s Next?
Watch for any formal revision to the price range in the coming days, and whether the greenshoe is exercised if the book is oversubscribed. The listing arrives at a precarious time: “A weekend is an eternity in this market,” one major investor told the FT, so a renewed sell-off in tech could still cool demand before pricing. Investors should also track how Anthropic polices the SPV and secondary offers it has said it will not recognize.
Affected Tickers and Coins: GOOGL, NVDA, MSFT, GS, MS
Source: Financial Times
