Investors weigh a $1.5 trillion Anthropic IPO, down from $2 trillion

Some of Anthropic's current investors, and some prospective buyers of its November initial public offering, are weighing a valuation around $1.5 trillion after the company's latest financial disclosures, Reuters reported late Thursday, citing four people familiar with the matter.

Three of them said investors who attended Wednesday's meeting in San Francisco discussed that figure. It is about $500 billion, or a quarter, below the roughly $2 trillion valuation investors had previously expected for the offering. It is a discussion among investors, not a price the company has announced, and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Anthropic told the meeting that third-quarter revenue rose 45% from the second quarter, to $16.8 billion. In the second quarter, revenue more than doubled from the first quarter and reached $11.6 billion. The company also said it was profitable on an adjusted basis in the third quarter.

The third-quarter revenue and the adjusted profit eased some concern about the cost of developing artificial intelligence systems, the people told Reuters. Some investors were still disappointed that growth had slowed from more than doubling to 45% in one quarter.

The roughly $2 trillion figure had been tied to the offering itself for weeks. On Sept. 11, Reuters reported that Anthropic was in talks on an initial public offering that could raise as much as $100 billion and value the company at around $2 trillion, with Nvidia considering an investment of up to $10 billion in that offering. On Oct. 1, Bloomberg reported that some prospective investors saw $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion as fair.

A valuation around $1.5 trillion would still stand well above the $965 billion valuation Anthropic reported after raising $65 billion in May, which Reuters reported on May 28. The New York Times reported on Oct. 14 that a $2 trillion valuation would push Anthropic past SpaceX, which went public in June at a $1.77 trillion valuation, as the world's biggest offering. At $1.5 trillion, the debut would sit below that valuation.

Reuters said a cooler reception for the offering could weigh on the wider market for artificial intelligence, whose near-term prospects investors see as turning largely on this sale and then on a possible listing by OpenAI.

Bloomberg reported on Oct. 1 that formal marketing could begin as soon as the week of Nov. 9, in time to begin trading before Thanksgiving, and that the schedule could still move.