Anthropic sets $70 to $78 IPO range before Nov 19 debut

Anthropic has set an initial public offering price range of $70 to $78 per share and expects to begin trading on Nasdaq under the symbol ANT on November 19, according to an amended SEC filing and people familiar with the details who spoke to CNBC. The offering includes 825,000,000 Class A shares, but Anthropic itself is selling about 801 million of those shares while its seven co-founders sell the rest, Stock Titan reported from the filing. Pricing is expected on November 18. People familiar with the details told CNBC the company is targeting a retail allocation of about 20%, compared with the typical 5% to 10% IPO allocation.

At the midpoint of $74, the company would be worth about $968 billion when counting the Class A and Class N shares that will be outstanding after the sale, Stock Titan calculated from the filing; the same measure runs from about $917.5 billion at $70 to about $1.02 trillion at $78. CNBC separately reported that Anthropic could be worth up to $1.405 trillion on a fully diluted basis. The midpoint sits near the $965 billion valuation Anthropic announced for its Series H round in May, Stock Titan noted.

Seven technology companies have agreed to buy $26 billion of Class N stock in a concurrent private placement at the IPO price, according to the filing and CNBC. At the midpoint, Google and Nvidia would each buy about $10 billion, with AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC Partners taking the remaining $6 billion, Stock Titan reported. Anthropic said the placement shares are not part of the offering registration and are not bound by the underwriters' lock-up agreements, according to CNBC.

Late on November 9, Anthropic emailed bankers a draft showing about 867 million shares at $70 to $80 each, then sent a second email saying the pricing details were "inaccurate" and that the filing would be updated later, 24/7 Wall St. reported. The company did not say which numbers were wrong and declined to comment.

Anthropic said its run-rate revenue was about $81 billion at the end of October, up $10 billion from the previous month. For the nine months ended September 30, revenue reached $33.24 billion, up about 1,200% from a year earlier, while the net loss was $104 billion, mostly from non-cash changes in the value of convertible notes and derivative liabilities. The company also lost $567 million from operations in the July-to-September quarter, Stock Titan reported. Anthropic, co-founded by Dario Amodei in 2021, sells the Claude family of AI models mainly to business customers. The listing would come about five months after SpaceX raised $85.7 billion in its IPO, CNBC reported. Institutional demand for the offering is stronger than it was for SpaceX at this stage, with orders already covering the $70 to $78 range, people familiar with the details told CNBC.