We’ve received quite a few questions about Anthropic’s upcoming IPO, so we thought it would be helpful to put together a brief overview of what investors should know and some important factors to consider before participating.
Our goal is simply to provide helpful information, not to make a recommendation for or against investing in Anthropic.
Following SpaceX’s IPO earlier in the year, Anthropic’s hotly anticipated IPO is set to hit the markets either November 19th or 20th. Anthropic (ANT) will list on the Nasdaq and is seeking a valuation of $1.4 trillion, making it the second-highest valuation ever seen at the time of listing, only behind SpaceX. The AI developer aims to sell 825 million shares priced between $70 and $78, with the stock officially being priced on November 18th after the market close. At the upper end of that range, the IPO is set to generate $64.35 billion, making it the second-largest IPO ever by proceeds raised, with only SpaceX ahead of it.
A successful Anthropic IPO will be a critical factor in sustaining the ongoing momentum of AI-related stocks, acting as a gauge of investor sentiment and belief in the future financial return potential of the industry. Further, our current market environment is largely driven by AI, making the outcome of this IPO relevant even to other sections of the market. To that end, Anthropic’s valuation of $1.4 trillion is a substantial increase from its last private valuation of $965 billion in May. However, the current valuation comes in far below recent Wall Street estimates that were as high as $2 trillion.
The Investment Side
Anthropic arguably is the current leader in AI models with its closest rival OpenAI, who is posed for a 2027 mega IPO, closely trailing. Yet, as we saw in 2025 with the release of the Chinese AI model DeepSeek, the current leader can potentially change overnight based on the latest model release. Central to maintaining their edge in the market, Anthropic has already committed an astoundingly large spend of $895.4 billion, mainly towards compute and AI infrastructure.
Such extreme spending has begun to weigh on investors, with some now wondering how such investments will actually pay off and when. Prompting prospective buyers to discuss an Anthropic valuation as low as $1.1 trillion, representing a substantial discount to the IPO price. At the same time, signs of Anthropic’s rapid ascent to dominance in the space are visible, as with their recent reveal that revenue grew 1,206% to $33.2 billion in the first nine months of the year.
As shown in the chart below, the previous ten largest IPOs (excluding SpaceX) have, on average, underperformed the S&P 500 by 96 percentage points since their debut, with only two out of ten outperforming the index. This precedent does not mean that Anthropic will underperform, but it demonstrates that high-profile IPOs may struggle to meet elevated expectations once they begin trading publicly.
Data Source: Barron’s, YCharts. The chart shows performance relative to the S&P 500 for the 10 largest US IPO stocks (excluding foreign issuers) since their listing up to June 2026.
Key Takeaway
As with SpaceX earlier in the year, taking a moderate position in Anthropic within a diversified portfolio, if desired, is not without merit and can make sense, as there are major potential upsides to the investment. Conversely, being aware of the risks and financials is also important, even if we often see markets that are divorced from investment fundamentals. For instance, SpaceX is currently down ~6% from its IPO in June and may face additional pressure in December as its 180-day lockup period expires for many investors, demonstrating that being a market leader does not necessarily make for great stock returns.