Anthropic, the American company that developed the “Cloud” chatbot, is preparing to raise up to $64.4 billion through an anticipated initial public offering, in one of the largest listings in the history of the financial markets, amid growing investor interest in the artificial intelligence sector and concerns about the sustainability of huge investments in infrastructure.
The latest draft of the IPO prospectus, seen by Reuters on Tuesday, showed that the company and some of its shareholders plan to sell shares at an indicative price of between 70 and 78 dollars. Anthropic intends to offer about 801.4 million shares, while current shareholders intend to sell 23.6 million shares.
In parallel with the public offering, the company is seeking to raise an additional $26 billion through a private placement with the participation of major investors, namely: “Alphabet” (the parent company of Google), “NVIDIA”, “Advanced Micro Devices”, “Broadcom”, “Micron Technology”, “Microsoft”, and “Taiwan Semiconductor Industry”. Thus, the total financing resulting from the offering and private investments may reach about $90.4 billion.
The listing of “Anthropic” constitutes a decisive test of the extent of public markets’ readiness to evaluate artificial intelligence companies, after years of massive investment flows that raised their market value. This step coincides with mounting investor questions about the ability of technology companies to achieve returns commensurate with huge spending and rising debt costs, in addition to the risks of overbuilding data centers and excess absorptive capacity.
Previous reports indicated that some potential investors were demanding more attractive valuations to participate in the offering, considering that the previously traded valuation of $1.5 trillion falls at the upper limit of their expectations, at a time when the company faces fierce competition with “OpenAI,” which amounted to about $965 billion in the last private financing round.
On the financial level, the IPO prospectus data showed a decline in Anthropic’s net losses during the third quarter, coinciding with a growth in revenues by 47% compared to the previous quarter to reach $16.96 billion, despite the slower pace of growth compared to the previous quarter, which recorded an increase of 144%. The company attributed this growth to the rapid spread of “Cloud” models and the expansion into specialized products for the healthcare, financial services, and legal sectors.
On the other hand, the IPO prospectus warned of several risks, most notably the possibility of competitors excelling in developing faster and more advanced models, as well as the possibility of technical developments exceeding the company’s ability to provide safety and security measures. It also warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence agents leaving isolated technical environments to penetrate private companies’ systems and using these tools to launch electronic attacks.
Anthropic faces huge commitments in computing infrastructure, as its commitments amount to about $900 billion with partners such as Amazon and Google, which reflects the dependence of its expansion plans on securing massive computing resources in the coming years.
This offering comes in the wake of the record listing of Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, which raised $75 billion last July at a valuation approaching $1.75 trillion, recording the largest listing in the history of the markets.
It is noteworthy that “Anthropic” was founded in 2021 by researchers who left “OpenAI” following disagreements over governance and the safety of artificial intelligence. The company is led by CEO Dario Amodei, and its list of investors includes prominent funds such as Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenox, and Sequoia Capital. The anticipated offering reflects the size of financial bets on the artificial intelligence sector and the ability of its pioneers to transform rapid growth into sustainable profits.
