Anthropic advances pre-Thanksgiving IPO at lower valuation

Anthropic is moving forward with plans for an initial public offering before Thanksgiving despite this week’s technology selloff. Investors cited by the Financial Times said the developer of Claude is seeking to raise between $80 billion and $100 billion, at a valuation of $1.25 trillion to $1.75 trillion.

That range is above Anthropic’s current valuation of $965 billion, but below the $2 trillion level that some investors had previously expected. The company’s annualized reported revenue has reached about $81 billion, compared with roughly $65 billion at the end of July.

The market decline followed higher borrowing costs and plans for substantial AI spending. It accelerated after Democrats won the US midterm elections; the party had pledged to slow data-center construction, among other measures. The Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4% on Thursday before recovering part of the loss on Friday.

OpenAI has also lowered its target for a funding round, from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion, and recently secured about one-third of the $30 billion it initially sought.