Anthropic has entered the hard part of its initial public offering. According to a document filed on Tuesday, November 10, with the U.S. regulator, the developer of Claude and some of its shareholders will offer 825 million shares at a price range of $70 to $78 per share.
That represents up to $64.4 billion, according to Reuters, a little over $61 billion at the midpoint of the range, per the Wall Street Journal. The company kicked off its roadshow the same day.
A valuation that depends on the method of calculation
The media outlets that analyzed the filing do not land on the same figure, because they rely on different bases.
- Reuters pegs the target at up to $1.02 trillion, based on the number of shares outstanding mentioned in the filing.
- The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) uses around $1.33 trillion.
- The Financial Times puts it at as high as $1.40 trillion. According to them, the filing implies a fully diluted range of $1.26 to $1.41 trillion, accounting for employee stock options and other restricted securities.
In addition to the public offering, Anthropic plans to raise up to $26 billion from private investors, at the same price as the IPO. According to the FT, the subscribers would include chipmakers (Nvidia, AMD, Micron, Broadcom, TSMC) and cloud providers (Google, Microsoft). The WSJ cites Google and AMD.
If the operation goes well, an over-allocation option (greenshoe) could bring in an additional $9.7 billion, according to the FT. With the private placement, the total would reach about $100 billion if sold at the top of the range. The WSJ, which does not include the greenshoe option, puts the figure at more than $80 billion for the company and the selling shareholders.
The seven cofounders sell part of their stakes
Each of the seven cofounders will sell the same amount of stock, i.e., about $250 million per person at the midpoint, according to the FT. Each would then hold shares worth roughly $18 billion at the final price. The WSJ puts the number of shares sold by executives and founders at about 23.6 million.
The stock will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.” The final price will be set after meetings with investors this week. A source close to the matter indicated that the first trading day is expected on November 19. The FT mentions a possible IPO as early as next week.
Existing shareholders are counting on what they call “forced buyers,” notably index funds and large asset managers. They do not yet hold the stock but are expected to be required to acquire some shortly after the IPO, according to the FT.
