Anthropic IPO Draws Six Times More Orders Than Shares on Offer
Anthropic’s initial public offering has drawn about six times the orders for the shares available, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, in a show of demand that sets up what could be the largest stock market debut on record.
The Claude chatbot maker is selling 825 million Class A shares at $70 to $78 each, with pricing expected on Wednesday 18 November and trading due to begin on the Nasdaq the following day under the ticker ANT. At the top of the range, the deal would value the company at about $1.4 trillion on a fully diluted basis.
Demand outstrips supply
Bankers told prospective investors that Anthropic will give priority to its existing backers when allocating shares, according to the report, leaving some would-be buyers with smaller allocations than they had hoped for. The level of demand could still change before pricing, and Anthropic could not immediately be reached for comment.
The heavy demand comes despite a difficult backdrop for artificial intelligence shares. Investors have been selling AI stocks hard in recent weeks, and Anthropic’s filed valuation is well below the $2 trillion figure that circulated only weeks ago. The order book suggests that, for this deal at least, appetite has not dried up.
The deal in numbers
The public offering alone would raise up to $64.4 billion. Anthropic itself is selling 801,351,354 of the shares on offer, with existing shareholders selling a further 23,648,646. The underwriters, led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley alongside 20 other banks, also hold a 30-day option to buy up to 123.75 million more shares.
Alongside the public sale, Anthropic has arranged a separate $26 billion private placement. Seven strategic partners — Google, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Micron Technology, Microsoft and TSMC — have agreed to buy non-voting stock at the IPO price. Taken together, the public offering and the private placement could bring in as much as $90.4 billion, which would exceed the $86.2 billion raised by SpaceX in its listing earlier this year.
The filing estimates net proceeds from the IPO and the private placement at about $84.6 billion, based on an assumed price of $74 a share, the midpoint of the range, according to the latest filings. Counting only shares actually outstanding, rather than on a fully diluted basis, the top of the range implies a market value of about $1.02 trillion.
A test for the AI boom
Anthropic set the price range last week, when it filed an amended prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and opened its roadshow. The terms were a comedown from the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion valuations discussed earlier in the autumn, and analysts have framed the listing as a key test of Wall Street’s confidence in the AI boom.
The company’s numbers explain both the excitement and the caution. Run-rate revenue — the annual revenue implied by its most recent month — reached roughly $81 billion as of 31 October, according to Reuters, and revenue for the first nine months of this year reached $33 billion, a 13-fold increase on the year before. Rival OpenAI recently reported quarterly revenue above $10 billion for the first time, underscoring how quickly the leading AI labs are scaling. The filing also shows a nine-month net loss of $104 billion and compute and infrastructure commitments of about $900.9 billion. Its last private funding round, in May, valued the company at $965 billion.
The Financial Times has reported that bankers are preparing to push the valuation to $1.5 trillion or more given the strength of the order book, although any final price above the $70 to $78 range has not been confirmed.
What happens next
Pricing is expected on Wednesday 18 November, with the first day of trading on Thursday 19 November. Research firm Vanda estimates that retail investors could account for about $250 million of net buying on the first day, compared with about $118 million it attributed to retail purchases in SpaceX’s offering.
That would still leave Anthropic’s debut as a largely institutional affair, with the biggest allocations going to the existing backers the bankers have promised to prioritise. But if the order book holds at roughly six times the shares on offer, the first big test of the AI market’s appetite in months will have been passed before a single share changes hands.
Frequently asked questions
When does Anthropic start trading?
Shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Thursday 19 November 2026, under the ticker symbol ANT, with pricing the day before.
How much is Anthropic raising?
Up to $64.4 billion in the public offering, plus a separate $26 billion private placement, for a combined total of as much as $90.4 billion.
What is Anthropic worth in the IPO?
At the top of the $70 to $78 price range, the company would be valued at about $1.4 trillion on a fully diluted basis, or about $1.02 trillion counting only shares outstanding.
