Anthropic’s $1.5T AI IPO hits buyer’s strike as the tech tide rolls out 📉

Prospective Anthropic investors are discussing a valuation of $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion following a sharp selloff in artificial-intelligence stocks, according to Bloomberg, while some investors are pressing for a price closer to $1 trillion. Before the rout, discussions with bankers centered on $1.4 trillion to $1.5 trillion. Anthropic was considering raising up to $100 billion, but another possible offering size has emerged at around $80 billion. One investor told The Wall Street Journal that the original valuation would be difficult to support, while another proposed delaying the offering until market conditions improve.

The company plans to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker “ANT,” with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading a group of 24 underwriters. The number of shares and price range remain unset in its November 2 amended filing. The roadshow was expected during the week of November 9, ahead of a possible November listing, but executives and advisers are expected to review the timetable. Anthropic’s $146.6 billion in cash position on September 30 gives it room to postpone or reduce the deal.

Market pressure intensified on November 5, when the Nasdaq fell 5.5% and Nvidia lost more than 9%. The S&P 500 later closed down 4.4%, the Nasdaq 100 dropped 6.3%, the Philadelphia semiconductor index slid 12.3%, and Nvidia fell 9.2%. The Nasdaq-100 decline erased approximately $2.3 trillion in market value, while US stocks lost about $2 trillion in the first trading hour. Stocks partly recovered on Friday morning: at 11:21 a.m. ET, the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.4% and Nvidia had gained 3.4%. Truist Advisory Services chief investment officer Keith Lerner said tech had trailed the S&P 500 by 10.7% in a month, the largest one-month gap since May 2002. “We are now seeing something of a buyers’ strike in tech,” he said.

Anthropic’s updated S-1 leaves October revenue blank, leaving investors without a figure they want to assess whether growth has recovered. Third-quarter revenue increased 46.7% from Q2, slowing from 144.2% a quarter earlier, according to the amended filing. Growth previously rebounded to 132% in Q1 2026 from 48% in Q4 2025. The Claude developer generated $33.2 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2026, roughly 13 times its revenue a year earlier, but swung from a $974 million operating profit to a $567 million loss. It has committed nearly $895 billion to future computing and infrastructure agreements, including at least $269 billion for computing services from major cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

Anthropic projects annual revenue of $190 billion to $200 billion by 2028. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, investors would pay approximately 22 times its latest quarterly revenue annualized, according to BloFin Research. New York Angels’ Bob Peck views Anthropic’s price as a yardstick for $2 trillion to $4 trillion cloud giants, while the Financial Times reported that some investors also want Anthropic’s price before backing OpenAI. Ondo Finance said its platform will offer tokenized Anthropic share exposure on the IPO date, and Polymarket traders assigned a 71% chance to Anthropic going public before the end of 2026.

The offering also faces regulatory uncertainty. Democrats are planning bills addressing electricity costs tied to data centers, independent testing of advanced AI systems, liability for AI-related harm, and closer scrutiny of companies including Anthropic. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called for a “national data center moratorium,” while Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has pledged to pause data center approvals in a state home to more than a quarter of planned US data center capacity. Technology analyst Richard Windsor said a delay is now an “escalating risk,” while PitchBook analyst Nalin Patel said a postponement would protect against near-term valuation risks if the correction persists.