Anthropic’s IPO roadshow opens at $70-78 a share

Anthropic on November 10 launched the roadshow for its initial public offering, setting a range of $70.00 to $78.00 a share for 825,000,000 Class A shares, according to Anthropic’s announcement. These are the first deal terms from Anthropic itself. At the top of the range the base offering comes to about $64.4 billion, and roughly $62.5 billion of that would go to Anthropic.

The gap between those two figures comes from who is selling. Anthropic is offering 801,351,354 new shares, and certain existing stockholders are selling 23,648,646. Anthropic receives nothing from the stockholders’ portion. Its own gross take therefore runs from about $56.1 billion at $70 to about $62.5 billion at $78.

Anthropic also expects to give the underwriters a 30-day option to buy up to 123,750,000 more Class A shares, 15% on top of the base deal. If that option is granted and fully exercised at $78, the offering would reach about $74.0 billion.

The published terms come in smaller on both counts than the ones that circulated a day earlier. Reuters reported that in emails to bankers on Monday, November 9, Anthropic shared terms of around 867 million shares at $70-80, then wrote that the pricing details were inaccurate. Those withdrawn numbers produced the $69.3 billion raise in the headlines. The official range tops out at $78, with 825 million shares in the base deal, so the base raise peaks roughly $5 billion lower.

Valuations around the deal are still outside talk, as they have been since the public S-1 filing on October 26. Bloomberg reported on November 6 that potential buyers were discussing $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion after a post-election selloff. In October, Reuters sources had put investor talk at about $1.5 trillion, down from roughly $2 trillion expected before. Neither figure comes from Anthropic, and the price range alone does not turn into a valuation without the total share count.

Anthropic has applied to list the stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley distributing the preliminary prospectus. The registration statement has been filed with the SEC but is not yet effective, and until it is, no shares can be sold and no offers to buy can be accepted.