Anthropic Sets $70-to-$78 Share Price for Nasdaq Debut

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, has set a price range of $70 to $78 a share for its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange, according to the BBC. At that range, the company could raise up to $64bn and be valued at between $1.1tn and $1.3tn, the BBC reported.

The number sits below what some backers were predicting only months ago. Some Anthropic backers had forecast a valuation near $2tn over the summer, according to the Financial Times, as cited by the BBC. The gap between that early talk and the range now on offer frames a company trying to go public at a moment when investors are suddenly less certain about the AI buildout they were cheering just weeks earlier.

When did Anthropic decide to go public?

Anthropic announced its intention to list in June, the BBC reported, and OpenAI, the rival company behind ChatGPT, said it would follow. OpenAI's own listing is now expected early next year, according to the BBC's reporting. The two companies share an origin story that matters here: Anthropic was co-founded in 2021 by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei along with five others, all of whom had worked at OpenAI before starting their own firm, the BBC noted. Five years later, the company they built from that split is about to become, in the BBC's words, the first fully AI-focused company to go public — a test case, by the same account, for how Wall Street prices the broader technology.

What do Anthropic's financial results show?

Anthropic's revenue for the six months ending in June rose to $16.2bn, up from $1.1bn in the same period a year earlier, the BBC reported. Over that same stretch, the company's pre-tax loss widened to $80.7bn from $12.9bn, according to the BBC. The combination — rapid revenue growth alongside a much larger loss — is the kind of profile that has made this listing closely watched: it will show whether public investors are willing to fund AI spending at the pace companies like Anthropic say the technology requires.

How does the Anthropic listing compare to other recent debuts?

At a possible valuation of $1.3tn, Anthropic would land below SpaceX, the rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company controlled by Elon Musk, which listed in June at a valuation of nearly $1.8tn, the BBC reported. Fiona Cincotta, a senior market analyst at City Index, told Reuters, as quoted by the BBC, that the $64bn Anthropic is seeking to raise is "fairly bullish" given "the volatility [and] concerns towards AI that we've seen in sort of particularly last week." She added: "It's showing that they are still sort of upbeat about the outlook as far as AI is concerned and that obviously that they think that the demand is going to be there."

Why is the stock market nervous about AI right now?

The listing arrives at what the BBC described as a volatile moment for big technology firms. Following last week's US midterm elections, the Nasdaq fell sharply on concerns that a Democrat-led Congress could slow AI development and the construction of data centers, according to the BBC. Beyond politics, the BBC noted wider doubts in markets about whether the billions of dollars already committed to AI infrastructure will ultimately pay off — the same question investors will be asking as they decide whether to buy into Anthropic's offering at $70 to $78 a share.

What has Anthropic said about AI risk?

The valuation push comes a month after Anthropic itself warned that AI could pose what it called "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity," the BBC reported. The company has said advanced AI systems "could, if not developed, deployed, and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight, and security measures, pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, particularly if such systems were misused, replicated, weaponised, or allowed to operate with a high degree of autonomy," according to the BBC's account of the company's own statement. The BBC also reported that the listing announcements from Anthropic and OpenAI were followed by a series of incidents involving AI agents — bots designed to operate with some autonomy — going rogue, and that current and former staff at both companies have warned the technology is being developed without adequate ability to protect against future harms.

When does Anthropic begin trading?

Anthropic is set to list under the ticker symbol ANT on November 19, the BBC reported. Between now and then, the $70-to-$78 range gives the market its first formal signal of how investors are pricing a company that is, by its own admission, both central to the AI boom and warning publicly about the risks of the technology it sells.