Anthropic may offer up to 20% of its IPO to retail, Bloomberg says
Dario Amodei at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, January 2025
Anthropic is considering setting aside 15% to 20% of the shares in its initial public offering (IPO) for individual investors, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Wednesday, 28 October. They said JPMorgan would lead the part of the US offering aimed at individual investors. TNW has not independently confirmed the report.
The S-1 prospectus only says that the banks may set aside shares for customers who use their online brokerage services. When SpaceX went public in June, it set aside about 20% of its shares for individual investors, after initially planning to offer them 30%, as Samuel O’Brient reported for Business Insider.
“Individual money is less sensitive to price, and a book that leans on it lets the banks price the deal higher than institutions alone would support,” Harrison Rolfes, a senior research analyst at PitchBook, told Business Insider.
Warren wants answers by 3 November
Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked Anthropic to answer four pages of questions about its IPO filing by 3 November. Corrie Driebusch reported on the letter for The Wall Street Journal, which had seen a copy. Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, sent the letter to chief executive Dario Amodei on Tuesday.
She asked how Anthropic would make sure its technology did not become a threat that could destroy humanity. She also asked about the company's relationships with Amazon and Broadcom, and how it would justify a value that could reach nearly $2 trillion. Anthropic did not immediately respond to the Journal.
The risks “demand greater scrutiny before they become intertwined with the public capital markets,” Warren wrote, according to the Journal.
The risks in the filing
The filing describes concerns, both within Anthropic and outside the company, about what advanced AI could lead to. It also warns that Anthropic could become a political target.
Sufficiently advanced AI systems “could, if not developed, deployed, and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight, and security measures, pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” the filing says.
The filing notes that proposed US laws could allow the government to take control of the most advanced AI systems or force them to shut down. It also says that the rules Anthropic supports could slow the company's growth. Government contracts account for about 1% of its revenue.
The same document explains how large Anthropic believes its market could be. The company says that knowledge work was worth more than $40 trillion worldwide in 2025. That is more than SpaceX's estimated market of $28.5 trillion, as the Journal noted.
More deals for computing power
TNW has reported on Anthropic's deals with Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Broadcom. Anthropic also agreed to spend up to $120.5 billion with SpaceXAI, a SpaceX unit previously known as xAI. Spending under this deal will reach about $3.1 billion a month starting in December. From early 2027 onward, either side can cancel the deal by giving 90 days' notice.
Anthropic also agreed to spend up to $44.6 billion with Nscale and about $41.3 billion with Lambda. It expects to spend another $125 billion to $150 billion on additional TPU chips from 2028 to 2031. These expected costs are not included in its table of commitments. Since 30 June, the company has signed deals requiring at least $245 billion in payments. The total amount it may have to pay is still not filled in. The Journal had reported that Anthropic could spend $750 billion on computing power.
Profit margins and who pays
In the first half of the year, Anthropic spent $2.38 billion on the costs of providing its services, mostly computing power used by customers. Its revenue during that period was $16.3 billion. This means its gross profit margin was about 85%. Semafor called this Anthropic's key number, citing The Information. However, this calculation does not include the cost of training AI models. Total spending on computing power was $8.95 billion.
“We do not expect our revenue will continue to grow at comparable rates, and we cannot assure you that it will continue to grow at all,” the filing says.
Profit margins could also fall because new computing capacity may become available before the company earns enough revenue from it. Models released in the six months ending 30 September accounted for more than 80% of revenue in the third quarter.
Sales made through the cloud marketplaces of Amazon, Google and Microsoft accounted for 48% of revenue in the first half of the year, up from 11% in 2023. Google has the option to buy up to $10 billion worth of Anthropic shares at the IPO price. Anthropic values the convertible notes held by Amazon at $108.6 billion, while Amazon values them at $97.9 billion, according to research by Equibles.
When company insiders can sell shares
Some shareholders will be allowed to sell their shares from the first day of trading. The co-founders and anyone who owns more than 0.5% of the company must wait until after the results for the third quarter of 2027, or 365 days. Most other shareholders can sell after the results for the first quarter of 2027, or 180 days.
In his newsletter, critic Ed Zitron wrote that the company described in the S-1 filing “no longer exists”. He pointed to the fact that the figures for the third quarter were left blank. MBI Deep Dives called Anthropic “a much, much better business” than it had expected, but said it would not buy the shares yet.