Bloomberg: Anthropic IPO is several times oversubscribed

Investors have placed orders for several times the number of shares available in AI developer Anthropic’s upcoming IPO, people familiar with the matter tell Bloomberg.

Most of the demand came from large indications of interest from so-called anchor investors. They cautioned that the terms of the IPO could still change. An Anthropic spokesperson did not immediately respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

Anthropic is holding a series of events to drum up interest among prospective investors. A livestream featuring Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is scheduled for Friday, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

Anthropic plans to sell stock at $70-78 per share. The IPO and a private placement could raise up to $90.4 billion combined, surpassing SpaceX’s IPO to make it the largest listing on record. At the top of that range, Anthropic would be valued at $1.4 trillion, below what some investors had expected. Given the strong demand, however, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the other underwriters hope to price the offering above the top of the range set out in the prospectus, the Financial Times reported, citing five people familiar with the matter.

Companies sometimes set conservative terms when they formally begin marketing an IPO, betting that strong demand will lift the final price and set the stock up for a strong first day of trading, Bloomberg noted.

Some investors are already offering part of their Anthropic IPO allocations to other buyers, allowing them to collect additional fees and reduce their exposure once trading begins, Bloomberg reports. Other investors are selling pre-IPO stakes through special-purpose vehicles.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the IPO, with 20 other banks in the underwriting syndicate. The shares are expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ANT.

Anthropic’s valuation rose rapidly, reaching $965 billion in May and overtaking the estimated value of ChatGPT developer OpenAI for the first time. Over the summer, Anthropic investors expected the company to go public in the autumn at a valuation of $2 trillion or more, the FT reported. At the time, Anthropic announced a sharp acceleration in revenue, with its annualized revenue run rate topping $65 billion.

In October, Anthropic told investors it had generated $16.8 billion in third-quarter sales, up 50% quarter over quarter, and posted an adjusted profit for the second straight quarter. Top-line growth had slowed from earlier in the year, however.