Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is targeting a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion in its upcoming initial public offering, according to securities filings released Tuesday.
The San Francisco-based maker of the Claude chatbot and some existing shareholders plan to sell 825 million shares priced between $70 and $78 per share, ABC News and TheWrap reported. The offering could raise up to $64 billion on its own, with Anthropic set to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol ANT.
The company also plans to raise up to $26 billion through a parallel private investment involving Alphabet’s Google, Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia, contingent on the completion of the IPO, according to filings reported by TheWrap and the New York Post. Combined, the stock sales could bring in as much as $90.4 billion, though a portion of the funds will go to selling shareholders.
Valuation lowered amid market turbulence
The targeted valuation of up to $1.4 trillion falls short of earlier discussions that pegged the company’s value at as much as $2 trillion, Reuters reported. The shift follows volatility across technology equities, including a recent $2.5 trillion market wipeout on the tech-heavy Nasdaq linked to political shifts and concerns over regulations on data centers.
Anthropic’s targeted value still positions it above rival OpenAI, which was valued at $1.25 trillion as of last week, according to The Verge. Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s rocket firm SpaceX set a record when it went public at a valuation of $1.77 trillion, the New York Post noted.
Anthropic has seen swift growth in commercial use of its Claude systems across industries like finance and healthcare. The company recorded annualized run-rate revenue of about $81 billion by the end of October, up $10 billion from September, according to filing data cited by the New York Post. However, financial disclosures revealed heavy costs: Anthropic took an $80.7 billion net loss over the first six months of the year against $16.3 billion in revenue, according to ABC News. In addition, the firm carries nearly $900 billion in long-term computing commitments with partners including Amazon and Google, Reuters reported.
Founders retain control as risks loom
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI researchers, including Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei, the company’s president. Under the proposed structure, the seven co-founders will retain a collective 50.1 percent voting power, allowing them to control just under half of the board seats, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The company’s regulatory filings also drew attention for an unusually detailed exploration of risks. About 90 pages of the roughly 300-page preliminary prospectus outlined scenarios that could harm Anthropic’s business, including concerns that advanced artificial intelligence could pose catastrophic hazards, ABC News reported.
“There is a risk that such systems could, whether due to misalignment with human intentions, errors in objective specification, or self-preserving behaviors, take harmful actions independently and at scale without human intervention,” Anthropic warned in its SEC filing.
The company acknowledged that its existing safeguards remain incomplete and could be circumvented as technology evolves. The disclosure comes after Anthropic acknowledged in July that internal testing uncovered three self-directed cyberattacks carried out by its models against other organizations.
What happens next
Anthropic is aiming for its shares to start trading on the Nasdaq as early as Thursday or Friday of next week, ahead of Thanksgiving, according to the Wall Street Journal. Ahead of the debut, CEO Dario Amodei is scheduled to appear in a livestream discussion regarding the offering alongside JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Friday, Bloomberg reported.
