Deep red into the Nasdaq debut: Will Anthropic's risky stock market bet pay off?

The US AI company Anthropic is heading for one of the largest IPOs in history. According to reports from US media, it should happen on Thursday. The listing on the New York technology exchange Nasdaq is planned under the English abbreviation for ant "ANT". However, the dimension is anything but small: the group wants to raise around $64 billion from its upcoming IPO. That would be the world's second-largest stock debut after US space company SpaceX, which raised $86 billion.

In recent months there has been market speculation about Anthropic's valuation of up to two trillion dollars. However, the company, best known for its chatbot Claude, is now aiming for a significantly lower valuation. Anthropic plans to sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each. This corresponds to a total valuation of up to $1.4 trillion.

However, market observers do not see this discount as a sign that the hype surrounding artificial intelligence has cracked. "The lowered valuation shows that investors have become more cautious in view of the gigantic infrastructure costs of around 900 billion US dollars," says Eckhard Schulte, CEO of Mainsky Asset Management, when asked by ntv.de. At the same time, banks and management specifically used the more cautious issue price to dampen expectations after the recent tech setback - and thus create room for price gains right at the start of trading.

An assessment that tech investor Philipp Klöckner also shares. He firmly expects the valuation to increase on the first day of trading and points out: "For investors, the closing price on the first day or after the holding period has expired is more important than the IPO valuation."

According to both experts, the lower rating is not slowing down Anthropic in the arms race for AI supremacy. According to Klöckner, the company's "war chest" is well filled with more than 100 billion US dollars even without an IPO because the company has so far operated very capital-efficiently. In addition, the targeted valuation is still well above the last private financing round of $965 billion, so that existing investors continue to achieve high book profits, adds Schulte.

While important competitors such as OpenAI or the smart ring manufacturer Oura recently put their stock market plans on hold, Anthropic is sticking to its plans. Many investors are unsettled after the US midterm elections, and growing doubts about the profitability of billion-dollar AI investments are overshadowing the industry.

Regardless, according to Klöckner, Anthropic has recently delivered “fantastic” growth, although the pace is now slowing. "In this respect, it is more appropriate to go public now rather than with the comparatively moderate growth of the next few months." At the same time, with this step the company is securing “the unique selling point as the only pure-bred AI stock on the trading floor,” emphasizes Schulte.

The figures submitted to the stock exchange supervisory authority show how quickly the business has actually grown recently: Since the commercial launch in the first quarter of 2023, quarterly sales have climbed from 0 to 17 billion dollars in the third quarter of 2026. In addition to the Claude language model, the main drivers are software assistants such as Claude Code, which carry out development and office tasks independently. At the same time, however, the document shows immense obligations to secure computing capacity.

According to the information, the bottom line was a loss of $23.3 billion at the end of the quarter. However, AI expert Teo Pham does not see this as a warning signal: "The high losses arise primarily because Anthropic is deliberately investing massively in the future: in AI infrastructure, data centers, the best minds and research." That is a crucial difference to a business model that fundamentally does not work. As long as the enormous growth continues, investors are likely to support these expenses.

Mainsky boss Schulte urges caution in view of the already slowing growth rate: Stock market investors generally only tolerate high losses as long as sales grow exponentially and increasing margins are foreseeable. "If growth cools while fixed data center costs continue, Wall Street's patience will quickly run out."

It is precisely this tension between record sales and gigantic costs that makes the debut a litmus test for the entire industry. “A successful start could dispel doubts about the billions in investments for the time being, while a weak start could put further pressure on the valuations of other tech giants,” says Schulte.

If the move to the trading floor is successful, it is likely to trigger a chain reaction: "A strong placement would reopen the door for postponed tech IPOs and put OpenAI in particular under pressure," says Schulte. AI expert Teo Pham goes even further: "In the coming years, we will see a whole wave of large AI IPOs, similar to previous technological disruptions." The Anthropic debut will further accelerate this trend.

However, if the stock market launch fails, the financing conditions for AI startups would become massively tighter, according to Schulte, and lead to significant valuation discounts in the venture capital market: "Investors would then concentrate their money even more on a few profitable market leaders instead of investing broadly in expensive basic models."

However, AI expert Pham believes such a failure is impossible. “The IPO is likely to be one of the most successful venture capital investments of all time for early investors,” he says. Hardly any company has ever grown so quickly in such a short time - the returns for the early investors are fantastic.

For investors who only get involved at the start of trading in New York, the real test is just beginning: They are betting that Anthropic can turn its billion-dollar costs into real profits in the long term.