Anthropic IPO Buyers Have More Sway Over Price Than SpaceX Did
Anthropic will price its IPO at $70-$78 a share, a conventional roadshow that gives institutional investors more sway than SpaceX's fixed $135 price, as a choppy AI market tempers a $1.4 trillion valuation.
Anthropic PBC will try next week to take SpaceX's title of the biggest public listing ever, but unlike Elon Musk's conglomerate, major investors will have more sway over its initial share price. The Claude developer is gauging interest at $70 to $78 a share, against SpaceX's fixed $135 price.
Institutional demand sets the price
Anthropic is running a more conventional roadshow, and setting the IPO price on institutional demand makes it less likely to trade below the IPO price, said Harrison Rolfes, senior research analyst for late-stage company research at PitchBook. Andy Tang, a partner at Draper Associates and former technology investment banker, said the company is listening to the market and bringing the IPO at a more conservative level. Jeff Zell, a partner and senior research analyst at IPO Boutique, said the timing likely contributed to Anthropic's lighter valuation and lighter cash raise.
The backdrop is harder than SpaceX's
SpaceX, whose shares now trade 3% above their IPO price, came to market in a quarter when the Nasdaq 100 jumped nearly 28%. The same index is down about 7% over the last three months after a U.S. interest-rate hike, worries about an oversupply of AI debt and a midterm election result in which the data centers powering models like ChatGPT and Claude drew voter ire. Those factors have hushed earlier whispers about a $2 trillion valuation for Anthropic. The ouster of Jensen Huang at Nvidia Corp. has also made the final stages of Anthropic's march to public markets more complicated than SpaceX's $86.2 billion June listing, the article said.
The numbers
Anthropic is now targeting a fully diluted valuation of about $1.4 trillion. It plans to raise as much as $64.4 billion in the IPO and $26 billion in a private placement, a total that would surpass SpaceX's IPO. The placement comes from seven tech companies led by Alphabet Inc. and Nvidia, which sends a positive signal about outside support in choppy markets, said David Erickson, an adjunct professor at Columbia University and former global head of equity capital markets at Barclays Plc. Placement investors cannot sell until the shares are registered later, and because they sit in Anthropic's compute supply chain they have an interest in holding for the long term, Erickson added.
Experience gap on Wall Street
Elon Musk has worked with bankers for well over a decade to raise capital for Tesla Inc., while Anthropic is a five-year-old company with relative newbie status. Erickson said Musk dictated terms, whereas Anthropic is likely doing what the banks recommend.