Anthropic wants to go public in November, but must lower expectations

Tech stocks have fallen this week, but according to investors, that is not stopping Anthropic. The AI company behind the Claude chatbot wants to go public before the US holiday Thanksgiving. That is according to investors who spoke to the Financial Times, as reported by the news site The Decoder.

An initial public offering (IPO) means a company sells shares to the public for the first time, so anyone can buy a small piece of it.

How much is Anthropic worth?

According to FT's sources, Anthropic wants to raise $80-100 billion at a valuation of $1.25-1.75 trillion. That is more than the current $965 billion, but below the $2 trillion the most optimistic investors had hoped for.

The Wall Street Journal paints a slightly different picture, according to the news site investinglive. There, large institutional investors are pushing for a valuation of $1.5-1.6 trillion, down from the roughly $2 trillion mentioned in recent months. Both outlets rely on unnamed sources, so the figures differ somewhat.

According to investinglive, WSJ's sources indicate that a roadshow, where the company presents itself to investors, could begin the following week. The IPO is targeted for the week before Thanksgiving. The final number of shares and the amount have not been set.

Why are tech stocks falling?

According to The Decoder, rising borrowing costs and big AI investment plans triggered a drop in tech stocks this week. It was reinforced by the Democrats winning the US midterm elections after promising, among other things, to slow the construction of data centers. The Nasdaq 100, an index of large technology companies, fell 6.4 percent on Thursday and recovered somewhat on Friday.

According to investinglive, the WSJ also cites double-digit share price drops in stocks such as Intel and Alphabet the week before as a reason investors' appetite for AI has cooled.

Growth behind the ambitions

According to The Decoder, Anthropic's annualized revenue is around $81 billion, up from about $65 billion at the end of July. Annualized means the current earnings are extrapolated to a full year.

According to The Decoder, rival OpenAI has lowered the target for its funding round from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion. The company has reportedly raised only about a third of the $30 billion it originally wanted. That has only been reported by The Decoder.