Anthropic IPO oversubscribed several times, Bloomberg says

Anthropic's initial public offering has drawn orders for several times the number of shares on offer, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, November 11, citing people familiar with the matter. The sources said the demand came mostly from anchor-size indications of interest. The report came one day into the roadshow for what could become the largest first-time share sale ever. Terms could still change, according to Quartz, which summarized the Bloomberg report.bloomberg.com+1

Record-setting terms

Anthropic launched its roadshow on Tuesday with a price range of $70 to $78 for 825 million Class A shares, according to CNBC Comcast Corporation ↘ 0.57%. At the top of the range, the IPO would bring in up to $64.35 billion. Anthropic will also raise $26 billion through a private placement at the IPO price with cornerstone investors including Google Alphabet Inc. ↗ 1.16%, Nvidia ↗ 3.25%, AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ↗ 5.02%, Broadcom ↗ 5.48%, Micron ↗ 10.75%, Microsoft ↘ 2.47% and TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited ↗ 3.27%. Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ↗ 0.25% reported that the IPO and the placement together would raise up to $90.4 billion. Combined, the two would be larger than SpaceX's offering in June, which raised $85.7 billion.cnbc.com+1

At the top of the range, Anthropic would be valued at about $1.4 trillion on a fully diluted basis and about $1 trillion on a non-diluted basis. Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ↗ 1.33% and Morgan Stanley are leading the deal with 20 other banks, according to Investing.com via Yahoo Finance. The shares are expected to list on the Nasdaq ↗ 0.00% Global Select Market under the ticker ANT. Anthropic plans to price the offering on Wednesday, November 18, and start trading on Thursday, November 19, according to CNBC.finance.yahoo.com

Room to move higher

The valuation target is lower than the roughly $2 trillion bankers floated this summer, The New York Times ↘ 0.59% reported. It is still well above the company's $965 billion private valuation from May. Several large backers pushed for a lower figure after AI stocks sold off last week, Quartz reported, citing The Wall Street Journal News Corp ↗ 0.94%. Fortune cited the Financial Times as reporting that bankers are now considering pricing above the range, which could lift the valuation to $1.5 trillion or more.nytimes.com+1

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives urged caution. "A deal of this size gets one shot at its debut, and making it digestible for the market matters more than the last turn of valuation," he wrote, according to Fortune.

Investor outreach and side deals

Anthropic is backing the roadshow with a series of investor events. These include a livestream on Friday, November 13, with CEO Dario Amodei and JPMorgan Chase ↘ 0.13% CEO Jamie Dimon, Quartz reported. Bloomberg's reporting also showed some activity on the sidelines of the deal. Some investors are passing parts of their IPO allocations to other buyers, which earns them fees and lowers their exposure once trading starts. Holders of pre-IPO stakes are offering them through special purpose vehicles. Anthropic did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.