By Sophie Lindqvist

Anthropic plans to price its initial public offering on Nov. 18 in a deal that, combined with a $26 billion private placement, would pull in $90.4 billion if shares land at the top of the marketed range. That figure would surpass SpaceX's June listing, which raised $86.2 billion, according to Bloomberg. If underwriters exercise the over-allotment option (an extra tranche of shares banks can sell after trading begins), the total would exceed $100 billion.

The scale matters because it would eclipse the roughly $98 billion stock offering Meta Platforms unveiled last month to finance its artificial intelligence push. Anthropic said in an updated filing on Tuesday that the IPO carries a price range of $70 to $78 a share. At the top of that range, the IPO alone would raise up to $64.35 billion before costs.

Who is buying the placement?

The private placement is not an open sale. Anthropic struck deals with Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to sell them $26 billion of Class N shares through privately negotiated agreements. The placement price would equal the IPO price.

The buyer list reads like the company's own supply chain and compute partners. Strategic placements of this kind lock in long-term partners as shareholders — and, skeptics will note, make it harder to read the public book as an independent verdict on valuation. Anthropic has not disclosed how the $26 billion splits among the seven buyers.

What does the valuation actually mean?

Anthropic could carry a valuation as high as $1.405 trillion once every potential share is counted, according to CNBC. That fully diluted figure includes shares that do not yet trade. It also sits well above the $965 billion valuation the company announced in a funding round in May.

The trajectory invites scrutiny. Some shareholders told CNBC last week that even a $1.5 trillion valuation was in doubt — a reminder that headline numbers and what insiders will actually pay are not the same thing. Neither figure has been tested in public trading.

Is the demand real?

Anthropic has drawn orders for multiple times the stock on offer, according to the source reporting. The demand stemmed from large, anchor-style expressions of interest — commitments from big investors that anchor a book before retail demand forms. The terms may still change, and anchor interest does not guarantee after-market performance. Oversubscribed books have preceded flat debuts before.

The company launched its roadshow on Tuesday. It includes a live-streamed event on Friday with CEO Dario Amodei and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Dimon's presence signals the bank's stake in the deal's success; JPMorgan's role as lead underwriter was not stated in the filing excerpts cited.

What does this change for the equity market?

The deal would cap a record year for U.S. equity raising. More than $425 billion has flowed to U.S.-listed firms via initial public offerings, finished at-the-market programs (pre-approved share sales by already listed companies) and marketed follow-on offerings, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That tops the roughly $408 billion raised in 2021, the previous record.

Bloomberg noted that the three largest U.S. IPOs on record have arrived within a few months of one another, fueled by the heavy capital demands of AI firms. SK Hynix's U.S. listing in July, at $26.5 billion, was the biggest ever by a firm headquartered abroad.

The concentration carries a caveat: record totals driven by three mega-deals reflect the capital intensity of a single sector rather than broad market health. Anthropic's pricing on Nov. 18 will test whether public investors will fund AI compute at valuations that some existing shareholders already question.