Anthropic to Go Public as Soon as Next Month, Valuation and AI Market Direction in Focus

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Anthropic could land in the capital markets as soon as next month. This IPO is far more than the public debut of an AI company; it is at the same time a touchstone for testing the US economy, with trillions of dollars in capital fortunes riding on this battle.

The company behind the Claude chatbot is a pillar-like giant of the AI industry. Its primary-market valuation is close to $1 trillion, and it has raised more than $130 billion cumulatively; this listing could raise $100 billion, vaulting it at once into the ranks of the world's most valuable listed companies. But the significance it carries goes far beyond that.

Anthropic and its number-one rival OpenAI sit at the top of an entire vast ecosystem chain of partnerships and suppliers: computing infrastructure service providers, chipmakers, energy companies, and a host of AI startups have all invested heavily over the past four years, betting that demand for AI products will keep rising.

Anthropic's listing will, for the first time, give the market a deep look at the core business fundamentals underpinning the AI boom, and test whether this cycle of prosperity can continue. The market needs to find answers: can the robust demand for AI services continue to support the massive investment in chips, data centers and other infrastructure? Or will Anthropic's results prove that there is a ceiling to AI growth?

Umesh Padval, an investor at Seligman Ventures with nearly 40 years of experience in the tech industry, said: "For the entire market, it is the bellwether."

If Anthropic's listing performance falls short of expectations, it will hit investor confidence and in turn trigger widespread selling, and the market will begin to question how much longer the AI boom can last. If the IPO concludes smoothly, it could lift the broader market and open the listing channel for more AI companies.

The stock market was already on edge, with tech stocks broadly weaker this month and AI chipmakers leading the decline. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has fallen 26% from its June high and has already entered a bear market (a decline of 20% or more from a recent high, representing a marked rise in investor panic).

Over the past two weeks, Microsoft canceled its partnership with data center service provider Nscale. A report by research firm Gartner predicted that 80% of new cloud providers (neoclouds) supplying computing power and data resources to AI companies may go under. Billionaire Ken Griffin, founder of hedge fund Citadel, said bluntly that investors in the AI sector are "almost certainly in a bubble."

A series of negative signals has intensified market concerns about the massive investment in AI infrastructure. Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft have all disclosed plans to invest a combined total of at least $740 billion this year in data centers and other AI infrastructure. According to PitchBook, which tracks investment and financing data, primary-market investors have injected $1.1 trillion into Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies since 2022.

As primary-market investment swells, the secondary market's dependence on the AI sector is also growing. The top ten constituents of the S&P 500 have a combined market value of more than $1 trillion, eight of which are tech companies; the top ten weighted stocks account for more than 40% of the index's total weight, compared with less than 20% a decade ago.

Once Anthropic is included in the index, it is very likely to push out Berkshire Hathaway or Eli Lilly (the only two non-tech companies with trillion-dollar market values) and enter the top ten.

Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at supply chain service provider Circular Technology, said: "Everyone is betting on this IPO. If it goes wrong, the whole market will be dragged down."

This month, Anthropic presented financial data and growth plans to investors at its San Francisco headquarters. Several data points looked very bright: the company's third-quarter revenue was $16.8 billion, up 45% quarter on quarter. But investors noted that its second-quarter revenue growth had reached 141%, a marked slowdown.

How the market interprets this slowdown is crucial. If the slowdown is because OpenAI and low-cost open-source models have taken share, then it shows that overall demand for AI services remains solid; if the slowdown stems from a contraction in AI demand across the industry, the market's reaction will be far more violent.

Anthropic declined to comment.

Over the past year, Anthropic has been the hottest company in Silicon Valley. Its Claude Code product has completely changed the way programmers write code, driving revenue to surge, and primary-market investors have pushed its valuation up to $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI.

To meet demand for its AI business, Anthropic has signed long-term computing leasing agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars, purchasing computing power from Google, Amazon and Microsoft, while buying chips from Nvidia and renting data centers from companies such as Nscale. And the vendors serving Anthropic have in turn poured heavy investment into upstream suppliers.

But this summer, some Anthropic customers began to feel that spending on tokens (the billing unit for AI processing and data generation) was too high and turned to lower-cost alternatives. Meta, one of Anthropic's largest customers, had originally expected to invest up to $10 billion a year in its technology, but later cut spending and switched to other AI models.

Some AI companies that listed this year have already seen their share prices weaken: Silicon Valley AI chipmaker Cerebras is down about 40% from its May offering price; AI infrastructure company Accelevation's current share price is about one-third below its September offering price of $18; Musk's SpaceX listed in June, and its share price has also fallen sharply from its high, though it is still about 9% above its offering price.

Against this backdrop, the IPO market as a whole has cooled. Holtec, which provides nuclear power support for the AI industry, withdrew its listing application last month; SB Energy, a data center company under SoftBank, a core investor in OpenAI, and Aggreko, which provides supporting power supply for data centers, both postponed their listing plans.

Matthew Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, which tracks IPO activity, said: "AI infrastructure is the core theme of this year's IPO market, and it is also the sector hit hardest in the sell-off of recent weeks."

Investment banks have warned companies that it is now difficult to obtain the valuations expected two months ago. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said on this month's earnings call that although the IPO window has not closed, companies seeking the valuations expected this summer will most likely have to wait.

"The market has clearly weakened in September," he said.

Anthropic's slowing revenue growth has further deepened market doubts. The market had previously expected its IPO valuation to reach as high as $2 trillion, but amid faltering growth and a sluggish broader market, people familiar with the matter said some investors have begun discussing a valuation range of $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion.

AI industry executives are working to soothe market sentiment. TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said this month that there is no ceiling to TSMC's profit growth.

Over the weekend, concerns about AI spending continued to fester and the broader market fell again, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index posting its largest one-day drop since June. news_keyword_pub,usstock,MSFT&GOOG&AMZN&GS&.IXIC&TSM&LLY&SFTBY Account opening QR code start

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