Anthropic IPO to price shares between $70 and $78, could value company at $1.4 trillion

The Anthropic IPO, the American artificial intelligence company that develops Claude, will sell shares priced between $70 and $78 each. The price range was disclosed this Tuesday (10) in an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At the top of the range, the offering of 825 million Class A shares could raise up to $64.35 billion and value the company at around $1.4 trillion, considering all shares.

The shares will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. According to CNBC, which spoke to people familiar with the matter, the final price is expected to be set on November 18, with trading starting the following day.

What's in the offering

In addition to the shares sold on the exchange, Anthropic has arranged the sale of $26 billion in non-voting Class N shares at the same IPO price. The buyers are AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia, and TSMC. According to TechCrunch, Google and Nvidia will each invest $10 billion.

The company has set aside about 20% of the offering for retail investors, a share well above the 5% to 10% typical in such deals, according to CNBC. The banks managing the offering may also purchase up to an additional 123.75 million shares.

The seven founders, including siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, plan to sell about 3.4 million shares each. At the midpoint of the range, $74, each sale would yield around $250 million. Even after the IPO, control remains with the founders, who will hold a special class of stock with 50.1% of the voting power.

High revenue and billion-dollar losses

The filing numbers show a company that is growing fast and still losing a lot of money. In the nine months ended September 30, revenue was $33.24 billion, up about 1,200% from the same period last year. By the end of October, annualized revenue reached $81 billion, $10 billion more than a month earlier.

In the same nine-month period, the loss was $104 billion, compared to $25.1 billion a year earlier. CNBC explains that most of the loss comes from changes in the accounting value of convertible notes and derivatives, not from operations themselves. The company also has about $132 billion in cash and short-term investments and $900.9 billion in commitments for computing and infrastructure.

"Our goal is to help humanity chart a safe path through this technological evolution," the co-founders write in the prospectus.

Why it matters and what comes next

If confirmed at the top of the range, the market value would be well above the $965 billion valuation from the May funding round. The rivalry with OpenAI also factors in: the competitor was valued at $1.25 trillion after raising $11 billion last week, according to TechCrunch. For comparison, SpaceX's IPO raised $85.7 billion.

So far, there is no information about an offering of Anthropic stock receipts on B3, the Brazilian stock exchange, or about specific rules for investors from Brazil. Until the debut, the price may still change depending on investor demand.