New York: Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is targeting a valuation of about $1.3 trillion as it prepares to go public, despite growing concerns about the scale of borrowing and investment flowing into the AI sector.
The company behind the Claude chatbot said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that it plans to offer 825 million shares priced between $70 and $78 each. At the midpoint of that range, the sale could raise more than $61 billion.
Setting an initial share price is a complex process for companies preparing to list. Pricing shares too high can lead to a decline on their first day of trading, while setting the price too low can leave the company and the banks managing the offering with less money than investors might have been willing to pay.
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The San Francisco-based company is expected to make its Wall Street debut this month.
Anthropic's initial public offering could rank among the largest ever, though it is expected to fall short of the record $86 billion SpaceX raised in its June IPO. An Anthropic listing would also put the company ahead of rival OpenAI in going public, potentially setting up two major stock market debuts for competing AI developers.
"For tech and AI, this is the first time a US frontier lab carries a standalone public market price, uncluttered by an ad business or a rocket business," Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives & Co., wrote.
The IPO could provide Anthropic with substantial funds to accelerate its expansion. It could also add billions of dollars to the fortunes of chief executive Dario Amodei and his sister and co-founder, Daniela Amodei.
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A regulatory filing last month showed that Anthropic's revenue had grown rapidly, reaching more than $16 billion in the first half of the year, 14 times the figure recorded during the same period last year. However, like several other technology companies preparing to enter the public markets, Anthropic has yet to turn a profit.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives, Anthropic is competing with the company for dominance in the AI industry. Both face competition from Google, emerging startups in the United States and China, and SpaceX, which also operates an AI business.
Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX's AI division have all recorded losses exceeding their earnings, reflecting the enormous costs involved in developing and operating advanced AI systems. The spending has fuelled concerns that the sector could be experiencing a speculative bubble.
These concerns have intensified amid volatility in technology stocks. Wall Street saw a sharp sell-off last week, led by companies linked to the expansion of AI data centres. Shares of AI-related companies have also fluctuated sharply in recent months, particularly after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates in September for the first time in three years.
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An inflation reading released in the United States on Tuesday added to concerns about borrowing costs, raising expectations that the Federal Reserve could take a more aggressive approach to controlling inflation through further rate increases.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei had cautioned in September that the AI industry should slow the pace of development to allow safety measures to keep up. Without such a slowdown, he warned, AI could become capable of deploying a network of agents that could take over the internet within six to 12 months.
In a post on his website, Amodei outlined proposals to strengthen oversight of the industry. He said Anthropic was already implementing some of the measures, while others would require coordination among companies and governments around the world, including authoritarian states.
Anthropic's shares are expected to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol 'ANT'.
