Anthropic Retracts IPO Pricing After Sending $69B Details to Bankers

Anthropic retracted a filing that showed it was aiming to raise $69.3 billion through an IPO, sending bankers a copy indicating 867 million shares at $70 to $80 per share before following up with an email saying those details were inaccurate. The pricing confusion comes as prospective buyers have been discussing a valuation of $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, raising questions about the AI startup's valuation ahead of what could become a record-breaking market debut.

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind Claude, retracted details of its proposed blockbuster initial public offering after sending them to bankers, saying the pricing information was inaccurate and that revised figures would follow. The artificial intelligence lab first sent bankers a copy of a filing that indicated a sale of about 867 million shares in a price range of $70 to $80 per share, but then followed up with an email saying that those details were inaccurate.

Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC together plan to invest a further $26 billion through a private placement at the IPO price. At the top of that range, the offering would raise $69.3 billion, putting it among the largest IPOs on record but still below the roughly $75 billion SpaceX raised in June.

The sequence was unusual because the indicative price range is central to an IPO's marketing process, yet the figures sent to bankers were withdrawn before Anthropic publicly confirmed final terms. Anthropic, founded in 2021, had been preparing for what could become the largest-ever IPO, surpassing SpaceX's record-breaking market debut in June this year. The company has said it will update its filing with corrected information, though the exact reasons for the pricing discrepancy remain unclear.