A wild few weeks for the artificial-intelligence trade hasn't deterred Anthropic from pushing ahead with its trillion-dollar initial public offering that will establish it as the market's AI bellwether.
The Claude developer said in a filing on Tuesday that it and some of its investors would sell 825 million shares of Class A at an estimated IPO price of between $70 and $78 a share.
At the top of that range, Anthropic would raise about $64.4 billion from its IPO. It's bidding to raise another $26 billion by selling shares to large-cap tech companies including Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
The private placement reads like a who's who of AI companies -- Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Micron, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are the other companies taking part in the offering. All seven stocks were sliding on Tuesday after consumer price inflation data came in hotter than expected.
With about 13.1 billion shares outstanding, that means Anthropic is aiming for a market value of around $1.02 trillion. Its fully diluted valuation could top $1.4 trillion when accounting for the likes of options and unvested stock awards.
The big number matters most for the market. Just a couple of months ago, Anthropic was rumored to be eyeing a $2 trillion valuation -- a figure Barron's called a "risky bet."
The AI trade has gone sour since then, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei playing a role when he called for a deceleration in model development. The backlash against data centers and the scandal engulfing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have also rocked AI stocks.
It's the right call to push ahead with the IPO rather than waiting for conditions to improve. Delaying the listing would only sow more panic at a time when investors appear to be getting over the worst of their AI fears. The Nasdaq jumped 2.7% on Monday.
Anthropic has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT. The final IPO share price is expected on Nov. 18, with shares expected to begin publicly trading on Nov. 19.
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