(Bloomberg) — Anthropic PBC’s initial public offering has drawn about six times the orders for the shares available, according to people familiar with the matter, as interest increases for potentially the biggest first-time share sale ever.
The Claude AI model firm and its co-founders are seeking to raise as much as $64.4 billion in the IPO and $26 billion in a private placement, its filings show. Taken together, the offering would be bigger than SpaceX’s IPO, making it the biggest listing of all time.
Bankers have told prospective investors that existing backers will be prioritized by Anthropic, and some would-be buyers will receive smaller allocations than they expect, some of the people said.
Details of the IPO including the demand for shares could change, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. A representative for Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The surge of interest in Anthropic shares contrasts with investors pulling back support for Nvidia Corp. after Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang was ousted from his post after reports of several affairs, including one with a woman suspected of spying for China.
The chipmaker has agreed to buy about $10 billion worth of shares in Anthropic as part of a $26 billion private placement concurrent with its IPO, the AI model firm’s filings show. Anthropic counts Nvidia as a strategic partner, and has committed tens of billions of dollars to deals securing access to its most advanced chips.
Anthropic is looking to bolster demand for the IPO with a campaign of events for prospective investors, including a live-streamed event with its Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei and JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon on Friday, a person familiar with the matter has said.
The company is targeting a fully diluted valuation of about $1.4 trillion, below where some investors expected the company to settle, Bloomberg News reported. Some companies set terms conservatively when they begin formally marketing their IPO, in the expectation that strong demand will push up the final figure and set them up for robust trading in their debuts.
Anthropic’s filing Tuesday supported the case for AI spending as sales continued to increase. The company reported a revenue run rate of $81 billion as of Oct. 31, up $10 billion from the end of September, the filing showed. Anthropic had a $65 billion run rate figure at the end of July, Bloomberg News reported. Anthropic defines the metric as annualizing consumption-based fees for a trailing 28-day period and subscription-based fees for a single month.
Some investors are offering a portion of their Anthropic IPO allocation to other prospective backers, letting them collect additional fees and reduce their risk before trading begins, while others with pre-IPO stakes are marketing them to buyers via special purpose vehicles.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are leading Anthropic’s IPO, with participation from 20 other banks, the filing shows. The stock is expected to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT.
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