Some Investors Want to Pay Less for Anthropic Stock Before Its Big Market Debut

Anthropic, one of the biggest artificial intelligence companies in the world, is getting ready to sell shares of itself to the public for the first time. This is called an initial public offering, or IPO. But some investors who might buy those shares are now saying the company may not be worth as much as people first thought. Four people familiar with the situation shared this information, though they asked not to be named because they were not allowed to speak publicly.

On Wednesday, October 15, Anthropic held a special meeting for investors at its headquarters in San Francisco. The company's chief executive officer, Dario Amodei, and its finance chief, Krishna Rao, spoke to a room full of the company's most important investors. At the meeting, Anthropic shared new financial numbers and talked about its plans for going public, likely in November.

Anthropic told investors that its revenue — the money it earns — jumped 45 percent in the third quarter of this year, reaching $16.8 billion. The company also said it made a profit during that period when certain costs were set aside. Those numbers sounded good on the surface, but some investors were not fully satisfied.

The issue was that Anthropic's growth had slowed down compared to earlier in the year. From the first quarter to the second quarter, the company's revenue more than doubled, rising to $11.6 billion. That earlier surge made the newer 45 percent increase look smaller by comparison, and some investors felt let down by the difference.

Because of this, some investors began talking about a lower price tag for the company. Three sources said investors at the meeting were discussing a value of around $1.5 trillion for Anthropic. That is still an enormous number, but it is a big drop from the roughly $2 trillion value that had been expected just weeks earlier.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei, along with other former employees of OpenAI, another well-known AI company. Anthropic makes a family of AI models called Claude, which can hold conversations, answer questions, and help with many tasks. Two giant technology companies — Google and Amazon — have invested in Anthropic and also help supply it with the computing power it needs to run its AI systems.

Last year, Anthropic's revenue grew twelvefold, meaning it was twelve times bigger than the year before, reaching nearly $4.6 billion. However, the company also lost more than $8 billion in that same year because building AI systems is extremely expensive. In its IPO documents, Anthropic projected a loss of $42 billion in 2025, and it plans to spend at least $518 billion over the next ten years on computing, cloud services, and other technology.

Anthropic's IPO is being watched very closely because it could signal how healthy the broader AI industry is. If the share sale goes well, it would be a good sign for the whole AI market. If it goes poorly, it could make investors more nervous about other AI companies, including OpenAI, which may also go public next year.

The concerns about Anthropic's IPO come at a tough time for technology companies. A selloff in tech stocks has been hurting many companies linked to AI, including chipmakers and companies that rent out computing power. For example, shares of a company called CoreWeave fell sharply, raising questions about whether the rapid expansion of AI is being funded in a risky way — with too much borrowed money.

Anthropic is not the only company facing IPO troubles lately. A data center company called SB Energy decided to delay its listing last month, and a nuclear technology company called Holtec Nuclear completely canceled its plans to go public. These setbacks show that the path to going public can be difficult, even for companies in exciting, fast-growing industries. Anthropic has not responded to requests for comment about any of these developments.