Anthropic presses ahead with Nasdaq listing as investors balk at $2 trillion price tag

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, is pressing ahead with plans to list on the Nasdaq before the Thanksgiving holiday even as some of the investors it is courting push back on the price tag the company has sought, according to reports Friday from the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and CNBC. The emerging gap between what Anthropic wants and what institutional buyers say they are willing to pay has become the clearest test yet of whether Wall Street's appetite for artificial intelligence stocks matches the valuations private markets have assigned them.

The company filed a public registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, disclosing its intention to list Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT. It followed that with an amended filing on November 2 that updated its financial disclosures. Neither document set a share count or a price range, which companies typically add only in the days before a roadshow begins.

A valuation under pressure

Anthropic had been angling for a valuation near $2 trillion when it confidentially submitted its first draft paperwork to the SEC in June, shortly after closing a private funding round that valued the company at $965 billion. By last month, bankers and the company were still discussing figures approaching $2 trillion. That changed this week. CNBC reported Friday that some investors now expect the company to price its debut below $1.5 trillion, with at least one person involved in the discussions suggesting a figure closer to $1 trillion to $1.25 trillion.

"Investors will expect the IPO to be priced at least at the low end of previous expectations," Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC on Friday, adding that pricing the deal conservatively is the best way to set Anthropic up for a strong debut.

The retreat coincides with a sharp sell-off in technology shares that, according to reporting that cites the Wall Street Journal, has institutional investors pushing for a valuation closer to $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion, well short of the roughly $2 trillion figure that circulated earlier this year. The Nasdaq Composite fell sharply this past week as investors weighed the scale of borrowing and spending committed to AI data centers against signs that the political mood in Washington has turned more skeptical of the industry following this week's midterm elections.

The numbers behind the filing

Anthropic's amended S-1 and an accompanying investor presentation put third-quarter revenue at roughly $17 billion, up from about $11.6 billion in the prior quarter, a jump partly offset by roughly $600 million in price reductions. The company's net loss for the first nine months of the year has been reported at well over $100 billion, driven overwhelmingly by non-cash charges tied to the changing fair value of convertible notes and other financial instruments rather than by operating costs alone. The filings also disclose computing purchase commitments and leases totaling roughly $895 billion, with nearly $450 billion of that due before the end of 2030 — a scale of forward spending that investors cited in the same reporting as a reason for caution on price.

The company has also proposed placing 5 percent of its shares into a newly created Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, an entity structured as a wholly owned limited liability company rather than a charity, with that stake potentially growing in increments as the company's value rises. The arrangement, which still needs stockholder approval, is meant to signal that Anthropic's mission-driven governance model will survive its transition to public markets, though the company has said it will disclose more about the fund's structure and decision-making only in the coming months.

Why the timing matters

Anthropic first flagged its intent to go public in a brief announcement on its own site in June, when it said it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement and that any eventual offering would "depend on market conditions and other factors." Five months and several amendments later, those market conditions have become the central uncertainty. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are leading the offering as book-runners, with a listing that bankers and company executives have been targeting for the week of November 9, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, according to people familiar with the planning cited in this week's reporting.

A deal of the size Anthropic has discussed, $80 billion to $100 billion raised at a valuation between roughly $1.25 trillion and $1.75 trillion under the most recent reporting, would rank among the largest in Wall Street history and would arrive within months of comparable offerings from SpaceX and, potentially, OpenAI, which has also been preparing to go public. Anthropic's position is distinct from its closest AI rival in one respect: it has reported adjusted profitability on a quarterly basis even as its overall net losses have widened, a split that has given analysts conflicting signals about how to value a company whose costs are rising in step with its revenue.

Who is affected

The outcome will shape far more than Anthropic's own balance sheet. Employees holding equity through an earlier tender offer, cloud partners including Amazon and Google that have invested billions of dollars and supply computing capacity, and enterprise customers cited as case studies in the prospectus all have a stake in where the stock eventually prices. A valuation materially below the figures discussed as recently as October would also reverberate through the broader private market for AI company shares, where Anthropic's own paper valuation has been used as a benchmark by venture investors pricing stakes in smaller rivals.

Institutional investors evaluating the deal face a different calculation: whether to buy into a company still posting tens of billions of dollars in quarterly losses at a price that leaves little room for error if AI spending growth slows further. Gil Luria's comment to CNBC captured that tension directly, framing a lower price not as a defeat for Anthropic but as the more realistic path to a stable trading debut.

What comes next

Anthropic has not publicly responded to the specific valuation figures now circulating. The next concrete marker will be an amended filing that finally sets a share count and an indicative price range, a step bankers typically take in the days immediately before a roadshow. If the week-of-November-9 timeline holds, that amendment could surface within days, giving the market its first hard look at where Anthropic and its underwriters have landed after a week of turbulence. Barring a further slide in technology shares, people involved in the planning still expect pricing and a Nasdaq debut before Thanksgiving, though, as with every large technology listing this year, the final number will be set only after investors have had their say.