Anthropic's IPO Is Said to Be Several Times Oversubscribed a Day Into Its Roadshow

The people said much of the demand came from anchor-size indications of interest, meaning large orders from prospective long-term holders. They cautioned that the deal's terms could still change. In an earlier report, Bloomberg said the order book was covered in full as soon as the offering launched.

The demand matters because of the deal's size and the doubts hanging over it. Anthropic is seeking up to $90.4 billion from the IPO and a concurrent private placement combined. According to Bloomberg's account of the filings, that would make it larger than SpaceX's planned listing. A book this full gives the underwriters room to price at or above the top of the range, at a time when the selloff in AI and chip stocks, led by Nvidia, has made investors more wary of the sector.

Anthropic opened its marketing on Tuesday with a price range of $70 to $78 a share. At the top of the range, the base offering would raise about $64.35 billion and give the company a fully diluted valuation of about $1.4 trillion. Bloomberg described that valuation as relatively conservative, which leaves room to raise the price if demand holds. The private placement, worth about $26 billion, is to be sold at the IPO price to a group of chip and cloud companies that, according to Bloomberg's reading of the filings, includes Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering, with 20 other banks taking part. Anthropic has applied to list its Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT, and the listing is targeted for November 19.

The company is courting investors well beyond the usual US institutions. It has opened a retail share offer in Australia and is seeking between $3 billion and $3.5 billion from Japanese investors. Even at the low end, that would be the largest offering by a foreign company in Japan. On Friday it plans a livestreamed investor event with chief executive Dario Amodei and JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon.

There are also signs of supply coming to market around the debut. Some existing backers have been offering parts of their IPO allocations to other buyers at a premium, and pre-IPO stakeholders are selling exposure through special-purpose vehicles. Anthropic's seven co-founders are each due to sell about $250 million of stock in the offering. Outside valuations vary widely. Morningstar puts a $1.7 trillion fair value on the company but has a bear case of $500 billion.

None of the order-book figures have been confirmed by Anthropic or its banks, and Bloomberg did not give an exact coverage multiple. Final pricing will show how much of the reported demand turns into allocations, and whether the banks push the price above the $78 top of the range.