Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, is set to begin trading on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange this month in a listing that could value the loss-making firm at as much as $1.3 trillion (£1 trillion), according to filings disclosed this week. The company plans to offer shares priced between $70 and $78, raising up to $64 billion in one of the largest market debuts in US corporate history.
The proposed valuation of $1.1 trillion to $1.3 trillion falls short of the $2 trillion some backers predicted this summer, the Financial Times reported. The scale of the float is all the more striking given Anthropic’s own warning last month that artificial intelligence could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity” — a caution that has done little to dampen investor appetite for the sector.
The listing arrives at a volatile moment for big technology firms. After last week’s US midterm elections, the Nasdaq fell sharply on concerns that a Democrat-led Congress could slow AI development and the buildout of data centres. Broader fears are also mounting over the billions of dollars being poured into AI and whether those investments will ultimately pay off.
Anthropic’s financials nonetheless show explosive growth. In results for the six months to the end of June, revenues jumped to $16.2 billion from $1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier, even as the company continues to post losses. The figures underscore the extraordinary demand for generative AI tools that has reshaped the technology landscape over the past two years.
Analysts remain divided on the timing. Fiona Cincotta, a senior market analyst at City Index, described the $64 billion target as “fairly bullish” amid “the volatility [and] concerns towards AI that we’ve seen in sort of particularly last week.” For Oregon’s technology workforce and investors, the debut will be a closely watched test of whether AI valuations can hold up under political and market scrutiny.
