Anthropic Advances IPO, Plans to Set Offering Price Next Week and List

The report, citing people familiar with the matter at The Wall Street Journal, said Anthropic plans to set the IPO price range this week and expects to begin trading next Thursday or Friday. If that timetable holds, Anthropic would become one of the most closely watched large technology company listings in global capital markets in recent memory.

However, investors now appear more cautious than earlier expectations for its valuation. A few months ago, the market discussed a possible post-listing valuation of $2 trillion for Anthropic; by the past week, the focus had fallen to about $1.5 trillion. Even so, some institutional investors still consider that valuation too high and want the company to lower its pricing further to make the shares more attractive after listing.

The valuation adjustment reflects a changing investment environment in the artificial intelligence industry. Previously, the market was broadly willing to pay a high premium for AI companies' rapid growth and future market potential, but recent sharp swings in technology stocks, along with large technology companies' rising spending on data centers and computing infrastructure, have led investors to focus more on companies' actual profitability, capital expenditure and long-term cash flow.

Anthropic's listing will also serve as an important gauge of investment enthusiasm in the AI industry. Because the company is OpenAI's main competitor in the generative AI market, its IPO pricing and listing performance are likely to influence investors' valuation judgments for the entire AI industry.

Notably, OpenAI also recently completed a new funding round. According to reports, the company raised $11 billion in new funds, reaching a post-financing valuation of about $1.25 trillion. However, the size of the round was below its initial target of $20 billion, showing that even the most closely watched companies in the AI sector must face a more cautious attitude from investors in the current market environment.

Anthropic had already formally submitted its listing registration documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, 2026, planning to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ANT. The company disclosed that revenue in the first half of 2026 reached $16.3 billion, compared with only $1.2 billion in the same period last year, a very rapid increase in revenue.

But rapid growth does not mean the company is already profitable. Anthropic recorded an operating loss of $693 million in the same period, while its net loss reached $80.7 billion, a large part of which came from non-cash accounting adjustments related to convertible debt. The company also explicitly warned investors in its listing documents that it may not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.

On the enterprise customer side, Anthropic's commercialization progress has been quite notable. As of the end of September 2026, the company had more than 11,900 customers with annual spending of more than $100,000, including about 1,900 customers with annual spending of more than $1 million and about 250 customers with more than $10 million. This shows that Claude is no longer just a chatbot for individual users, but is gradually becoming an important tool in enterprise software development, knowledge work and automated processes.

Anthropic's IPO also has an unusual governance arrangement. The company's seven co-founders will jointly control 50.1% of shareholder voting rights after listing through Founder LLC, while the company's Long-Term Benefit Trust has the power to appoint a majority of the board. This system is intended to ensure that the company remains committed to its long-term public interest and AI safety mission after going public.

However, this also means that ordinary public shareholders, even if they invest large amounts to buy shares, will find it difficult to materially influence major company decisions through shareholder votes. For institutions and individuals hoping to invest in Anthropic, the company's governance structure will be a factor that cannot be ignored when assessing its long-term investment value.

Anthropic's challenges are not limited to its listing valuation. The company needs to continue investing huge amounts of money to build computing infrastructure, while also responding to competition from OpenAI, Google and open-source models. How to turn rapidly growing revenue into sustainable profit will be a key issue for public market investors.

If Anthropic can complete its listing next week as planned, it will be an important financing event in the history of the AI industry. At the same time, whether the final offering price can win recognition from institutional investors will also test how high a premium the market is actually willing to pay for AI companies' future growth. It should be emphasized that, as of November 9, the specific valuation range and final offering price have not yet been announced, and the listing timetable remains subject to the company's subsequent formal announcements.