Anthropic’s $1.5T IPO Roadshow Gets a $1T Reality Check 🪙

Anthropic’s planned initial public offering is under increasing pressure after prospective investors pushed back against a $1.5 trillion valuation, with discussions reportedly shifting toward $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion and one major investor suggesting a price closer to $1 trillion. The company, which develops the Claude family of AI models, filed to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol "ANT," aiming to go public the week before Thanksgiving and raise up to $100 billion, although $80 billion has emerged as another possibility.

Anthropic executives and advisers are expected to review the IPO in the coming days as investors reassess the deal following a sharp selloff in AI-related stocks. Major investors are “increasingly skeptical” that the IPO can proceed at the expected valuation of $1.5 trillion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Three prospective investors said the original valuation would be difficult to support, while some investors reportedly want the October revenue figure before committing. Anthropic’s updated S-1 left October revenue blank; third-quarter revenue rose 46.7% from Q2, slowing from 144.2% a quarter earlier, according to the amended filing.

The market decline added to the pricing concerns. The S&P 500 closed down 4.4%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 fell 6.3% and erased approximately $2.3 trillion in market value, the Philadelphia semiconductor index slid 12.3% and Nvidia dropped 9.2%, marking the S&P 500’s and Nasdaq 100’s worst days since April 2025. Stocks partly recovered on Friday morning: as of 11:21 a.m. ET, the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.4% and Nvidia had gained 3.4%. US stocks had lost about $2 trillion in the first trading hour of Thursday, while tech trailed the S&P 500 by 10.7% in a month, the most extreme one-month gap since May 2002, Truist Advisory Services chief investment officer Keith Lerner said. “We are now seeing something of a buyers’ strike in tech,” he said.

Anthropic has room to postpone or reduce the offering, reporting $146.6 billion in cash on September 30. The roadshow, a series of investor meetings before pricing, had been expected the week of November 9. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are named first among 24 underwriters, and both Anthropic and existing shareholders plan to sell shares, but the number of shares and price range have not been set. Some analysts expect strong retail demand, as with SpaceX, although SpaceX shed 20% from its peak within a week of its June debut. New York Angels’ Bob Peck views Anthropic’s price as a yardstick for $2 trillion to $4 trillion cloud giants, while some investors also want Anthropic’s price before backing OpenAI, the Financial Times reported.

The IPO review also comes amid scrutiny of AI infrastructure and regulation. Democrats are planning bills addressing electricity costs tied to data centers, independent testing of advanced AI systems and liability for harm, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called for a "national data center moratorium" and Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has pledged to pause data center approvals in a state home to more than a quarter of planned U.S. data center capacity. A delay is an “escalating risk,” technology analyst Richard Windsor told The Telegraph, adding that “A postponement would protect against near-term valuation risks and would be more likely if the correction sustains over a longer period.” Anthropic’s growth had reached 132% in Q1 2026 from 48% in Q4 2025, and Polymarket traders assigned a 71% chance to Anthropic going public before the end of 2026.