Anthropic IPO date and price: ANT trades Nov. 19, here’s the catch

Anthropic plans to sell 825 million Class A shares at between $70 and $78 each. Here is what the filing and early reports lay out:

• Price range: $70 to $78 per share, with a $74 midpoint.
• Money raised: $57.75 billion at the bottom of the range, up to $64.35 billion at the top.
• Pricing day: November 18, per people familiar with the details.
• First trading day: November 19, on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
• Ticker: ANT.
• Lead banks: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, with 22 banks working on the deal in total.

The banks also have the right to buy up to 123.75 million extra shares if demand runs hot. And the order book is already covered at the proposed range, according to people who spoke to reporters.

About that valuation. The $1.404 trillion figure counts every option and similar security that could become a share later. Counting only the roughly 13.09 billion shares expected to exist after the sale, the range works out to about $916 billion to $1.02 trillion. Both are big numbers, so expect to see each quoted.

You can’t buy directly from Anthropic. Instead, retail shares flow through brokers, and each country has its own route.

In the US, JPMorgan is leading the domestic retail marketing and deciding share allocations. Brokers collect requests from their customers and pass that demand to the company and its banks. Robinhood’s chief financial officer, Shiv Verma, called the race between brokers for a bigger slice “a food fight.” In the SpaceX listing in June, platforms such as Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, E*Trade and Robinhood all competed for allotments, and every eligible customer who asked through them got some stock. Anthropic hasn’t said which US apps will offer its shares, so check whether your own broker has an IPO request page.

In the UK, Anthropic is reportedly working with RetailBook, a licensed operator under the country’s public offer platform rules. That lets a foreign company sell to British savers without a full UK prospectus, and other investing apps would feed orders into RetailBook. SpaceX used the same route in June and sold $364 million of stock to UK individuals. No final decision has been announced, so treat this as the expected plan rather than a promise.

In Canada, Citigroup is coordinating the international retail offer, which covers Canada along with the UK, parts of Europe, Japan and Australia. Anthropic’s IPO page has gone live with separate paths for the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Japan, though for now it only says more information is coming. Interactive Brokers, Revolut and SBI are among the firms named as taking part.

If you miss the IPO allocation, there is a simpler option: once ANT opens on November 19, anyone with a brokerage account that trades US stocks can buy at whatever the market price is. That price may be far above, or below, the IPO price. This isn’t financial advice, just how the process works.

A normal IPO sets aside 5% to 10% of shares for individuals, with the rest going to pension funds and other big institutions. Anthropic’s reported 20% target is far more generous, but final allocations depend on demand and on how the banks build the order book before pricing. If millions of people ask, each may get only a few shares, or none.

There’s a second catch, and it’s about control. Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, a company legally required to weigh a public mission alongside profit. A single Class F share, held by an entity owned by the seven co-founders, carries 50.1% of the voting power on most matters. Its Long-Term Benefit Trust also elects a majority of the board. The filing itself warns that Class A buyers will have limited influence over big decisions.

Just a couple of months ago, Anthropic was reportedly eyeing a $2 trillion valuation. Last week, talk had slipped to about $1.5 trillion, and some big investors pushed for something nearer $1 trillion after a sharp sell-off in AI stocks. The current range sits between those marks.

Even so, it is a big step up from the $965 billion valuation Anthropic reached in a May funding round. For comparison, rival OpenAI was reportedly valued at $1.25 trillion last week after raising $11 billion.

Seven of Anthropic’s suppliers are also buying in. AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC agreed to pay the same IPO price for $26 billion of Class N shares, which carry no votes, with Google and Nvidia putting in about $10 billion each. Those shares skip the usual post-IPO lock-up, the waiting period before early holders can sell.

Revenue is growing fast. Anthropic says its run-rate revenue (a yearly figure projected from current sales) reached $81 billion as October closed, a jump of roughly $10 billion in a single month. Third-quarter revenue was $17 billion, and sales for the first nine months reached $33.2 billion, up from $2.5 billion a year before.

The losses look scary at first glance: a $104 billion net loss over nine months. Most of that, $94.3 billion, is a non-cash charge linked to the rising value of convertible notes and similar instruments. The operating loss was a far smaller $1.26 billion. Anthropic also holds nearly $132 billion in cash and short-term investments.

The bigger worry is the spending pipeline. Anthropic has committed to about $900.9 billion in future costs, mostly computing power and data centers, with about $70.7 billion due in the next 12 months. History offers a warning too: Facebook’s 2012 debut was priced high, and its shares sat below the offer price for much of the following year.

Three things will tell you how this is going. First, whether the $70 to $78 range holds or gets raised or cut, which signals demand. Second, the final price on November 18. Third, how much stock actually lands in individual accounts.

There’s also a public pitch on the way. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, is expected to discuss the IPO with JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon in a live-streamed chat around lunchtime on Friday in New York. If you’re hoping for shares at the IPO price, the practical step is to check your broker’s IPO section now, since brokers gather customer requests and pass them on before the final price is set.