Anthropic opens IPO to retail buyers in Europe, Australia

Individual investors in Spain and much of Europe can now apply for Anthropic shares. Germany's financial regulator, BaFin, approved the European prospectus for the AI company's initial public offering on Wednesday, Nov. 11, El País reported. Australia's retail offer opened the same day and closes at 5 p.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time on Nov. 17, according to CNBC. Together, the two openings bring a large share of the Claude maker's planned retail allocation to buyers outside the US.elpais.com+1

How Europeans can buy

The European offer covers Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden, plus Switzerland, Anthropic's IPO support page says. In Spain, investors can apply through JPMorgan ↗ 0.60% and Deutsche Bank ↗ 0.75%, or through platforms such as eToro, Interactive Brokers ↗ 6.32%, flatexDEGIRO, Revolut, Trade Republic and Scalable Capital. There is no minimum order, and orders can be placed until the day before the debut, El País reported. No Spanish bank is part of the deal. Europe is expected to take about 80 million shares. The European prospectus sets a $120 maximum price, a ceiling required under EU rules that would let the company raise its range if demand is strong.support.claude.com+1

The paper also cautioned that applying does not guarantee an allocation. Bloomberg reported that the offering was already oversubscribed several times over.

The Australian window

CommSec, the brokerage arm of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is the lead Australian broker. It is joined by Macquarie, Bell Potter, LGT Wealth, Morgans, Morgan Stanley ↗ 1.70% Wealth Management, Sharesies and Stake, CNBC reported. The offer is limited to Australian residents and covers only newly issued Class A shares, Investor Daily reported. Australian sources put the listing date at Nov. 20 local time, according to Bloomberg.cnbc.com+2

A record-sized deal

Anthropic plans to sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each, which would raise up to $64.4 billion, Reuters reported. The shares are expected to start trading on the Nasdaq ↗ 0.04% on Nov. 19 under the ticker "ANT." The company will also raise $26 billion through a private placement with cornerstone investors, including Alphabet's ↗ 2.28% Google, Nvidia ↗ 3.53% and Advanced Micro Devices ↗ 7.99%. The price range would value Anthropic at as much as $1.41 trillion on a fully diluted basis, The New York Times reported. About 20% of the offering is aimed at individual investors.nytimes.com+1

Analysts remain divided. Thomas Rice of Minotaur Capital told The Nightly that the prospectus numbers "were much better than I and a lot of people expected." He also warned that many business workflows "don't really need a frontier model versus a second-tier one, or Chinese open weight models."thenightly.com.au