The mystery of Anthropic's IPO pricing: 1 trillion or 1.4 trillion, revealed this week
Anthropic officially launched its roadshow, and this historically largest IPO will hit the market on November 19, but the controversy surrounding its valuation has not subsided since the beginning.
According to the revised S-1 filing, Anthropic plans to issue 825 million shares at a price of $70 to $78 per share, with the stock ticker ANT, and the pricing will be determined the night before November 19 (next Thursday). Including the 1.2375 billion shares of overallotment and $26 billion in private placement, the total financing scale will exceed $100 billion, surpassing the previous record of $86.2 billion set by SpaceX.
Goldman Sachs serves as the lead underwriter for this IPO, with Morgan Stanley and 20 other banks participating in the underwriting. CNBC cited sources stating that 20% of the shares in this IPO have been allocated to retail investors, with pricing to be determined on the day of listing, and subscription applications have covered the entire issuance range.
However, whether Anthropic's market value is $1 trillion or $1.4 trillion depends on how the shares are calculated. Reuters and Bloomberg both estimate its market value at about $1 trillion, while CNBC reports it as $1.405 trillion. Both figures are verifiable but based on completely different criteria. Regardless of the method used, this valuation is 30% to 50% lower than the $2 trillion target circulating in the market in early October.
The Valuation Mystery: Two Numbers, Each with Evidence
The gap between $1 trillion and $1.4 trillion stems from different bases for calculating shares.
Based on the actual circulating shares: adding the existing 11.93 billion shares (including preferred shares and common stock converted from Amazon's convertible notes) to the 801 million new shares from the IPO and approximately 333 million shares from private placement, the total is about 13.07 billion shares. At $78 per share, the market value is approximately $1.02 trillion, which is also the basis typically used by index providers.
To reach $1.4 trillion, uncirculated shares must also be included:
1.77 billion employee options, with an average exercise price of only $2.91, 96% of which are in the money, corresponding to a market value of about $138 billion;
1.07 billion unvested RSUs, corresponding to a market value of about $84 billion;
29 million shares added after September 30 due to acquisitions and donation matching projects, corresponding to about $2 billion;
2.05 billion shares reserved for the 2026 equity incentive plan and employee stock ownership plan, corresponding to about $160 billion.
It is worth noting that the $160 billion worth of shares has not yet been granted to anyone. Excluding this portion, the fully diluted valuation is approximately $1.24 trillion. The market prediction platform Polymarket had listed the range of $1.25 trillion to $1.50 trillion as the most probable range before the prospectus was released, which closely aligns with the final filing range.
Goldman Sachs Forecast: Revenue Exceeds $600 Billion by 2030
As the lead underwriter for this IPO, Goldman Sachs has provided extremely aggressive forecasts for Anthropic's growth prospects.
According to the Financial Times, Goldman Sachs expects Anthropic's revenue to be about $52 billion this year, reaching $136 billion by 2027, $442 billion by 2029, and exceeding $600 billion by 2030—this figure is over 130 times the company's $4.6 billion sales in 2025.
However, this growth path comes with massive cash consumption. Goldman Sachs expects a free cash outflow of $12.8 billion in Q4 2026, reaching as high as $65.7 billion in 2027, with free cash flow expected to turn positive only in 2030, reaching $33.6 billion at that time. Operating losses are expected to peak at about $40.4 billion in 2027, turning profitable in 2029, with operating profit reaching $65.2 billion in 2030.
The prospectus reveals that as of October 31, Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate has reached $81 billion, with a month-on-month increase of $10 billion. Based on the upper limit of the issuance range, the price-to-sales ratio that investors are currently paying is about 17 times; if calculated based on circulating shares, it is about 13 times.
$26 Billion Private Placement: Suppliers as Shareholders
Another major highlight of this IPO is the $26 billion private placement arrangement—seven subscribing parties are also core suppliers to Anthropic.
According to the prospectus, the subscription amounts from each party and the products or services they provide to Anthropic are as follows:
Google: $10 billion (cloud services and TPU)
NVIDIA: $10 billion (GPU)
AMD: $2.5 billion (GPU)
Broadcom: $1 billion (custom chips)
Micron: $1 billion (memory)
Microsoft: $1 billion (cloud services)
TSMC: $500 million (chip foundry)
This structure means that funds flow from suppliers into Anthropic as equity investments and then flow back to suppliers in the form of purchase orders. Additionally, the prospectus shows that part of Google's $10 billion is used to fulfill obligations it committed to in a previous agreement in 2026, so the actual new funds in the private placement may only be about $16 billion. Amazon, due to shareholding ratio limits, only converted its convertible notes within the limit and did not participate in this placement.
Record Financing Scale, But the Bills Are Even More Astonishing
The $100 billion financing scale sets a historical record, but compared to the expenditure commitments Anthropic has already signed, it still seems insufficient.
The prospectus shows that Anthropic's commitments for computing resources and chip purchases are nearing $901 billion, with about $71 billion due within the 12 months ending September 2027. In other words, this largest financing in history can only cover about 15 months of signed bills, accounting for about one-tenth of the total commitment.
Meanwhile, the financial data in the prospectus also shows some pressure: Q3 revenue grew 47% quarter-on-quarter to $16.96 billion, but the growth rate significantly slowed from 144% in Q2; operating profit turned from $974 million in Q2 to a loss of $567 million in Q3, with operating expenses reaching $17.5 billion; price reductions and contract discounts reduced Q3 revenue growth by about $600 million, and the pricing of the Fable model launched on Monday was again lowered by 20%, which has not yet been included in the above data.
Market Background: Pricing Game Under the Shadow of AI Stock Sell-off
Anthropic's IPO roadshow coincides with a severe shake-up in the AI sector.
The Nasdaq 100 index previously recorded its largest single-day drop since the COVID-19 pandemic, with market concerns that a Democratic sweep in Congress could freeze up to 45% of data center construction plans.
H.C. Wainwright analyst Mike Colonnese stated before the official document release that due to the overall sell-off of AI stocks, Anthropic's potential IPO valuation is under pressure, and the valuation range discussed by investors has been lowered from the previous $1.4 trillion to $1.5 trillion down to $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, but the revenue run rate exceeding $80 billion in October indicates that the valuation adjustment reflects more market sentiment rather than a substantial deterioration in fundamentals.
Sentiment in the cryptocurrency market is relatively optimistic. The implied market value of Anthropic's pre-IPO contracts on the Hyperliquid platform briefly rebounded to about $1.7 trillion after the prospectus was released, about 20% higher than the upper limit of the fully diluted valuation range.
It is noteworthy that the prospectus uses the phrase "pioneering the era of miracles" to describe the company's mission while also warning of "existential risks" to humanity, explicitly indicating in the risk factors that the company's models "have previously exhibited, and may in the future exhibit, unexpected, inconsistent, or autonomous behaviors, including taking harmful actions without user or third-party instructions."
OpenAI is currently raising funds at a valuation of $1.25 trillion and has postponed its own IPO plan to 2027, closely monitoring every price movement of Anthropic's IPO. On November 19, the market will provide the first public benchmark for valuations in the AI industry.
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