Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, is pressing ahead with plans to begin marketing its stock market debut next week, even as the investors it needs to buy the shares question whether the price tag it has been discussing can still hold.
The company filed its public prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, and an amended filing followed on November 2. The shares are to trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the offering alongside 20 other banks. The listing is targeted for the week before the US Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, which would make it one of the fastest and largest technology flotations ever attempted.
Under the timetable the company has been working to, the roadshow — the series of meetings in which executives present the investment case to large institutional investors — was expected to start in the week beginning November 9, with pricing the following week. No date has yet been formally set, and the amended prospectus still leaves the price range, the number of shares to be sold and even the October revenue figure blank.
What has changed in the past few days is the price investors are willing to discuss. In early October, talk centred on a valuation of about $2 trillion. By mid-October, Reuters reported that investors were discussing around $1.5 trillion, and Bloomberg reported a range of $1.4 trillion to $1.5 trillion given to bankers. Then came a sharp selloff in technology stocks, and the numbers began to slide.
On November 5, the Wall Street Journal reported that three major investors planning to take part in the offering believed the proposed valuation would need to come down, with one suggesting a level closer to $1 trillion. The following day, Bloomberg reported that prospective buyers were discussing $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, with some weighing as little as $1.1 trillion. The Financial Times, citing multiple investors, reported the same day that the company still planned to list before Thanksgiving and expected to raise $80 billion to $100 billion at a valuation of $1.25 trillion to $1.75 trillion.
Reuters, citing four people familiar with the investor talks, reported on November 5 that potential investors had questioned whether the roadshow could even begin next week in time for a November listing. The report said some investors may seek a larger discount to commit, given the company's quarterly losses and substantial financial commitments to its technology partners. Anthropic has declined to comment on the reports, and it has not announced any change to its timetable.
The scale of the offering is what makes the argument matter so much. At $80 billion to $100 billion, it would be the largest initial public offering in history, dwarfing the records set by earlier technology listings. The last confirmed valuation, by contrast, comes from a priced deal: $965 billion post-money, from the $65 billion Series H funding round announced in May 2026. Every figure since then comes from reported investor discussions rather than a completed transaction.
The company's own filings give investors plenty to argue over. Revenue for the three months to September 30 was about $17 billion, according to the filings as reported by Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal — up from about $11.6 billion the previous quarter and $1.4 billion in the same period a year earlier. Reuters reported from the prospectus that 2025 revenue grew 12-fold to nearly $4.6 billion, while the net loss was about $42 billion, of which roughly $34 billion was an accounting charge on financing that could convert into shares. The amended filing leaves the October run-rate revenue figure literally blank.
The doubts arrive at a difficult moment for the whole artificial intelligence sector. Technology stocks have fallen sharply since the midterm elections, with the Nasdaq suffering its worst day since April 2025 on November 6, and investors have begun to question how much they should pay for companies whose growth depends on enormous spending on computing power. Anthropic is not alone in testing the market: Reuters has reported that OpenAI is racing to raise about $30 billion at a valuation that could top $1.4 trillion, and OpenAI said this week it had closed the first $11 billion of a funding round at a $1.25 trillion valuation.
For Anthropic, the coming days are expected to be decisive. The Wall Street Journal reported that executives and advisers were due to meet to review the deal, and the next hard evidence of where the final valuation will land is likely to be a new amended filing setting out the price range, the share count and the October revenue figure that is currently blank. If the roadshow slips, the listing slips with it, and the company could simply wait if AI assets stay under pressure, as Reuters has reported it might.
Whether the offering goes ahead on schedule or not, it has already become a test of how much the market will pay for the companies building the most advanced AI systems. A listing at the top of the discussed range would value a five-year-old company at more than most of the world's largest businesses; a listing at the bottom would still be enormous, but it would mark a sharp retreat from the expectations of only a month ago.
Figures in this report were checked at 14:55 PKT on 08 November 2026 against reports from the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.
