Anthropic Bankers Push For Higher IPO Valuation Amid Warnings That Weak Debut Could Prick AI Bubble

Nasdaq futures rallied Wednesday morning after CoreWeave’s earnings showed strong sales growth, lifting Taiwanese and Korean equities overnight. Improving sentiment around the AI trade is emerging after last week’s Democratic sweep sparked crisis fears about potential data center moratoriums.

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Ahead of Anthropic’s mega IPO, expected next Thursday, sentiment toward the AI trade must improve. An underperforming IPO could mark the top of the AI bubble, according to Jack Selby, who runs the venture capital firm Copper Sky and managing partner in Peter Thiel’s family office, in an interview with Bloomberg TV earlier today.

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Anthropic’s IPO roadshow began Tuesday as the “fair value” of what could be the biggest IPO ever slid from $2 trillion to $1.5 trillion, then to $1.2 trillion. Dario’s chatbot company filed an amended S-1 yesterday revealing plans to sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each under the ticker ANT, with pricing set for next Wednesday night and trading set to begin on Thursday.

And now, a new report from The Financial Times says that bankers on the IPO want to boost Anthropic’s valuation to north of $1.5 trillion.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which are leading the IPO, expect pricing could exceed the $70-to-$78 range because of strong demand. 

The S-1 showed that Anthropic aims to raise as much as $64 billion through the public offering, with an overallotment option adding almost $10 billion. Google, Nvidia and Microsoft have separately committed a combined $26 billion through a private placement at the IPO price. Higher pricing could push total fundraising well above $100 billion, exceeding SpaceX’s offering from early summer. 

“Three of the company’s backers said Anthropic was now focused on raising as much as possible via the listing to support its heavy spending on computing power, rather than maximizing its valuation,” the FT reported.

Morningstar analysts put the estimated fair equity value at $1.7 trillion, while Hyperliquid’s pre-IPO Anthropic contract implies a valuation of around $1.8 trillion on Wednesday morning.

Returning to Selby’s interview with Bloomberg earlier this morning, he warned:

 ”An underperforming Anthropic IPO has to be a very prominent player in what will be a pretty massive correction in the market with respect to AI. If the most anticipated AI company’s IPO falls very short of its projected valuation, and just imagine where it’s going to go after the lockups expire.”

Supporting the market between now and next Thursday is the only thing on the minds of anyone with skin in the AI ecosystem game (so everyone), but as The FT notes, citing ‘one major investor’, “a weekend is an eternity in this market.”