Anthropic Targets $64 Billion in Nasdaq IPO Under Ticker ANT

Anthropic plans to raise roughly $64 billion in its Nasdaq debut on Thursday, trading under the ticker "ANT" — the abbreviation for ant — in what would be the second-largest stock listing in history, behind only SpaceX's $86 billion debut.

The company, best known for its Claude chatbot, will sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each, according to US media reports. That price range implies a total valuation of up to $1.4 trillion — well below the $2 trillion figure markets had speculated in recent months.

What does the lower valuation signal?

Market observers do not read the discount as a crack in AI enthusiasm. Eckhard Schulte, CEO of Mainsky Asset Management, told ntv.de: "The lowered valuation shows that investors have become more cautious given the enormous infrastructure costs of around $900 billion."

He added that banks and management deliberately set a more cautious issue price to dampen expectations after the recent tech correction — creating room for share-price gains right at the start of trading.

Tech investor Philipp Klöckner agrees. He expects the valuation to rise on the first trading day and cautions: "For investors, the closing price on the first day or after the holding period is more decisive than the IPO valuation."

How strong is Anthropic's financial position?

The reduced target will not slow Anthropic in the race for AI dominance, both experts say. Klöckner puts the company's "war chest" at more than $100 billion even without the IPO, citing Anthropic's capital-efficient operations to date.

Schulte notes the target valuation still sits far above the last private funding round, which valued the company at $965 billion, so existing investors continue to book substantial paper gains.

The figures filed with the stock regulator show the growth behind the story: quarterly revenue climbed from zero at the commercial launch in Q1 2023 to $17 billion in Q3 2026. Drivers include the Claude language model and software assistants such as Claude Code, which handle development and office tasks autonomously. The same filings, however, disclose massive commitments to secure computing capacity.

What about the $23.3 billion loss?

The company posted a quarterly loss of $23.3 billion. AI expert Teo Pham sees no warning sign: "The high losses come mainly from the fact that Anthropic is deliberately investing massively in the future: in AI infrastructure, data centers, the best minds and research." That, he argues, differs fundamentally from a business model that simply does not work. As long as growth stays enormous, investors should tolerate the spending.

Schulte urges caution, given the already slowing growth rate. Stock investors typically accept high losses only while revenue grows exponentially and rising margins come into view. "If growth cools while fixed data-center costs keep running, Wall Street's patience could end quickly," he said.

Why does the debut matter for the whole sector?

The tension between record revenue and gigantic costs makes the listing a litmus test for the industry. Rivals such as OpenAI and smart-ring maker Oura recently put their IPO plans on ice, while investors remain unsettled after the US midterm elections and growing doubts about the profitability of billion-dollar AI investments.

Klöckner said Anthropic has delivered "fantastic" growth whose pace is now easing. "It is therefore opportunistic to go public now rather than with the comparatively moderate growth of the coming months." Schulte stressed that the move secures Anthropic "the unique selling point of being the only pure-play AI stock on the exchange."

A successful launch could trigger a chain reaction. "A strong placement would reopen the door for postponed tech IPOs and put OpenAI under particular pressure," Schulte said. Pham goes further: "In the coming years we will see a whole wave of large AI IPOs, similar to earlier technological upheavals." He expects the Anthropic debut to accelerate that trend.

A failed start, by contrast, would sharply tighten financing conditions for AI startups and trigger significant valuation markdowns in the venture capital market, Schulte warned. Investors would then concentrate their money on a few profitable market leaders instead of spreading it across expensive foundational models.

Pham rules out that scenario: "The IPO is likely to become one of the most successful venture-capital investments of all time for early investors." Few companies, he said, have ever grown so fast in so little time.

For investors entering at the New York opening bell, the real test begins afterward: they are betting that Anthropic can eventually convert billions in costs into actual profits.