Anthropic is targeting 1,400 billion, but its base bid remains below that of SpaceX
The former San Francisco-based start-up has filed the document ahead of its IPO. It has raised 64 billion, but a further 26 is held by major tech firms
It was supposed to be the biggest IPO in history. Instead, the figures suggest it most likely won’t be. At least if we look solely at the base offering. Anthropic has in fact filed the much-anticipated terms of its initial public offering, and the figures show that the company is aiming for a valuation of around 1,400 billion dollars and to raise approximately 64 billion. A huge sum, but not on a par with that of SpaceX. A figure which nevertheless remains a record, considering that the company behind Claude will still be the first cutting-edge artificial intelligence research lab to be listed on the stock exchange.
More specifically, according to the document filed with the SEC, the former San Francisco-based start-up and its co-founders intend to raise up to $90.4 billion through an IPO and a private placement. The base offering is worth up to $64.4 billion, with a price ranging from $70 to $78 per share. A total of 801.4 million shares will be offered to the market, whilst existing shareholders are selling 23.6 million shares. The figure for the private placement – totalling $26 billion – is particularly interesting. This channel is reserved for tech giants such as AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC.
At the upper end of the price range, the market capitalisation would be around 1,000 billion dollars, calculated on the basis of the shares in circulation as stated in the document. Taking into account employees’ share options, restricted shares and shares set aside for the programme through which the company doubles charitable donations, the figure rises to 1,400 billion. Including the over-allotment option, known as the ‘greenshoe’ (the option that allows the underwriters organising the flotation to sell more shares than originally planned, usually up to 15 per cent more), the total target could rise to around 100 billion. In this case, the figure would exceed the 75 billion from SpaceX’s base offering and the 86.2 billion subsequently raised by Elon Musk’s company through the greenshoe.
The price will be set on Wednesday 18 November and the shares will begin trading the following day, Thursday 19 November, on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol ANT.
