Markets

Anthropic’s I.P.O. Wobbles as Its Valuation Could Slide to $1 Trillion

co-produced by AI06. November 2026, 09:27

Dario Amodei, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Anthropic. © World Economic Forum / Sandra Blaser

A month ago the talk was of $2 trillion; now $1 trillion is on the table: After the tech stock selloff that followed the U.S. midterm elections, doubts are growing about Anthropic’s initial public offering. According to The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, major investors doubt that the maker of Claude can reach the $1.5 trillion valuation it was most recently targeting. The timetable for a listing this month is also in question, according to the reports.

What Investors Are Saying

The rumors come from two sources, neither of which names names:

The Wall Street Journal: Three major investors who had planned to take part consider $1.5 trillion unrealistic after Thursday’s selloff. One of them sees the valuation “closer to $1 trillion.” Anthropic’s executives and its advisers are expected to meet in the coming days.
Reuters: According to four people familiar with the investor discussions, investors doubt that the roadshow can begin next week as planned and that the listing can still take place in November. Anthropic may need to offer a bigger discount, given its record of quarterly losses and the large commitments it has made to partners in the A.I. buildout.

According to Seeking Alpha, citing The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic could raise about $80 billion instead of up to $100 billion, or delay the offering. Some investors reportedly want to see the October results first. Anthropic declined to comment on the reports.

From a $2 Trillion Dream to a Discount

Expectations have dropped sharply in just a few weeks. In early October, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic was aiming for a valuation of up to $2 trillion and a listing in mid-November. The company filed its prospectus in late October without a price range, and the shares are to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.” At the time, investors were talking about $1.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion.

By comparison, in its last private funding round, a Series H in May, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. The round was co-led by Altimeter, Sequoia, Coatue and Dragoneer, among others. At $1 trillion, the I.P.O. would come in less than 4 percent above its valuation of six months ago.

Then came the midterms. After the Democrats’ victory, the Nasdaq lost about $2.5 trillion in market value in a single day, according to Reuters, its biggest one-day drop since April 2025. Chipmakers, data center operators and neoclouds fell by double digits, and SpaceX, which only recently went public, lost almost 14 percent in two days. The worry is that the new Congress could slow the construction of data centers and regulate A.I. companies more tightly. Senator Elizabeth Warren has already written to Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, about the risks the company disclosed in its prospectus.

Record Revenue, Record Losses

Anthropic’s numbers turn its valuation into a matter of faith. In the third quarter, the company brought in about $17 billion in revenue, 12 times as much as a year earlier, but posted a net loss of $23 billion. On top of that come about $895 billion in commitments, almost entirely for computing power and infrastructure, which is exactly the kind of data center buildout now under political pressure. Pressure is also coming from elsewhere: In October, Mark Levine, the New York City comptroller, urged Anthropic to pause its I.P.O. until it addressed concerns about A.I. safety and governance.

The Competition

Anthropic is not the only A.I. lab feeling the headwinds. OpenAI has already shelved its I.P.O. and cut its funding round from $30 billion to $20 billion, at a valuation of $1.25 trillion. The record for an I.P.O. is held by SpaceX at $86.2 billion, a mark Anthropic had hoped to beat. Smaller A.I. companies are feeling the mood, too: The British data center operator Nscale is worried about its own I.P.O., and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines, after a failed attempt at $50 billion, is now negotiating at a valuation of $40 billion.

The Case for Going Ahead

Nothing has been called off yet, and Anthropic’s business keeps growing rapidly. According to the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, its annualized revenue recently reached $68 billion, and the number of monthly users of the Claude app has grown more than tenfold in a year. Even at a valuation of $1 trillion and an $80 billion offering, the I.P.O. would land just short of SpaceX’s record.