Major investors are increasingly doubtful that Anthropic's initial public offering can go ahead at its expected valuation of $1.5 trillion, after a sharp sell-off in AI stocks, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Anthropic, which filed last month to list on Nasdaq under the ticker "ANT," has been aiming to go public the week before Thanksgiving and raise up to $100 billion, according to the Journal. But three major investors who plan to take part in the IPO told the paper the valuation will likely need to come down, with one suggesting it could be closer to $1 trillion.
The company could also raise less than planned, perhaps around $80 billion, one investor told the Journal. Another wondered whether Anthropic might delay the offering until market conditions improve. Anthropic executives and advisers are expected to meet in the coming days to discuss the plans, according to the report.
The doubts follow a rout in AI stocks on Thursday, as investors weighed whether Democratic gains in the midterms could bring stricter oversight of data center construction. The S&P 500 closed down 4.4% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 fell 6.3%, both their worst days since April 2025, while the Philadelphia semiconductor index slid 12.3% and Nvidia dropped 9.2%, NBC News reported. Stocks partly recovered on Friday morning: as of 11:21 a.m. ET, the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.4% and Nvidia had gained 3.4%, according to Yahoo Finance.
Democrats are planning bills to shield consumers from rising electricity costs tied to data centers, require independent testing of advanced AI systems and clarify when AI companies can be held liable for harm, Reuters reported, though any legislation would likely face steep odds while Trump remains in the White House. The party also plans closer scrutiny of leading AI companies, including Anthropic, according to the report.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called for a "national data center moratorium," while Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has pledged to pause data center approvals in a state that is home to more than a quarter of planned U.S. data center capacity, CNBC reported.
A delay to Anthropic's IPO is now an "escalating risk" in the current environment, technology analyst Richard Windsor told The Telegraph. "A postponement would protect against near-term valuation risks and would be more likely if the correction sustains over a longer period," said Nalin Patel, an analyst at PitchBook, according to the paper.
Some investors want to see Anthropic's October results before assuming a cut. The company's annualized revenue run rate topped $80 billion at the end of October, and it had $146.6 billion in cash as of September 30, according to the Journal.
Traders have pushed back their expectations. On Polymarket, the odds that Anthropic lists by November 20 stood at 43% on Friday, while the chance of a listing by the end of the year was 71%. On Kalshi, where traders bet on when Anthropic will officially confirm its IPO, the odds of that happening before December 1 fell 15 points to 59%, while the chance of it happening before January 1 slipped to 68%. On Decrypt Predict, a prediction market developed by Decrypt's parent company, Dastan, traders also put the odds of an Anthropic IPO before 2027 at 71%.
The valuation now in question is already well below earlier expectations. In September, Decrypt reported that a leaked draft filing showed Anthropic was seeking a valuation of around $2 trillion.
