Anthropic has kicked off its IPO roadshow, with seven tech giants joining forces to place bets on it.

As its IPO draws near, Anthropic has stepped up its pace of operations recently.

On November 9 local time in the United States, Anthropic released two new models, Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2, in one go. Only one day later, on November 10, the company announced the official launch of its initial public offering (IPO) roadshow, planning to issue 825 million shares at a price range of $70 to $78 per share, with a planned listing on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol ANT.

Calculated based on the post-issuance share capital, Anthropic's maximum valuation is approximately $1.02 trillion. Multiple foreign media outlets reported that if potential shares such as options and restricted stocks are included, the fully diluted valuation could reach $1.4 trillion.

This IPO has another more notable highlight: Seven technology companies including Google, NVIDIA, AMD and Microsoft will invest $26 billion through private placement, among which Google and NVIDIA have each pledged to invest $10 billion.

If both the public offering and the strategic placement are completed as scheduled, the total financing size of this Anthropic offering is expected to exceed $900 billion.

However, the capital market is not dominated by optimistic sentiment alone.

On one hand, the Claude business is growing at a high speed, and Anthropic's revenue in the first three quarters has reached $332 billion; on the other hand, the company has signed long-term procurement and lease commitments of about $9.009 trillion, the vast majority of which are related to computing power infrastructure.

This star AI company is using this IPO to answer a question: How high a valuation can the fast-growing AI business actually support?

01 IPO Valuation Finally Confirmed

The most concerning part of Anthropic's IPO is that the offering price and valuation have finally got clear conclusions.

According to the latest offering documents, the company plans to issue 825 million Class A common shares at a pricing range of $70 to $78 per share. Among them, about 801.35 million shares will be issued by the company, and the remaining 23.65 million shares will be sold by existing shareholders.

Calculated at the maximum offering price of $78, the public offering will raise about $644 billion. The underwriters also have an over-allotment option to purchase an additional 123.75 million shares.

In terms of valuation, two calibers need to be distinguished.

Calculated based on the approximately 13.087 billion issued shares after the completion of the IPO and private placement, Anthropic's corresponding valuation ranges from about $9.16 trillion to $10.2 trillion. If potential shares such as options and restricted stocks are further included, the maximum valuation may reach about $1.4 trillion under the fully diluted caliber.

Therefore, the $1 trillion and $1.4 trillion figures appearing in the market are not two different offering plans, but come from different calibers of share capital calculation.

Even under the fully diluted caliber, $1.4 trillion is still lower than the previously discussed market valuation expectation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.

In May this year, Anthropic completed a $650 billion financing round, with a post-investment valuation of $9.65 trillion. In just a few months, the company began to hit the public market, and its valuation has also moved from the previous private market pricing to the more rigorous test of the public market.

Yahoo Finance estimates according to SEC rules that if the fastest process is adopted, Anthropic may start trading as early as the week of November 16. As a reference, SpaceX took 23 days from the public submission of IPO documents to its official listing this year. If Anthropic follows a similar pace, its shares may start trading on November 18. However, the specific listing date remains to be officially confirmed.

For Anthropic, listing is not only a large-scale financing, but also a test to accept the public market after the AI capital boom gradually enters the stage of rational pricing.

02 Seven Tech Giants Place Joint Bets

Another important highlight of Anthropic's IPO is the collective entry of tech giants.

According to the offering documents, Anthropic plans to issue Class N common shares to seven technology and semiconductor enterprises through private placement after the completion of the IPO, raising a total of $260 billion.

Among them, Google and NVIDIA have each pledged to invest $10 billion, and AMD has invested $2.5 billion. Broadcom, Micron and Microsoft have invested $1 billion respectively, and TSMC has invested $500 million.

The seven companies span the cloud computing, AI chip, semiconductor manufacturing and storage industrial chains, covering almost all core infrastructures required for Anthropic's development.

If both the public offering and private placement are completed smoothly, the total financing amount of this Anthropic offering will reach about $904 billion. After including the over-allotment, the scale may be further expanded.

The significance of this sum of money is not just to increase cash reserves.

Google and Amazon are not only important investors of Anthropic, but also its cloud computing and computing power suppliers. NVIDIA and AMD are core participants in the AI chip industrial chain. Microsoft also has business cooperation with Anthropic in the cloud computing and AI markets.

These companies are both partners of Anthropic and competitors in the AI market.

The interweaving of investment and procurement relationships means that Anthropic's growth has been deeply bound to the entire AI infrastructure industrial chain.

However, this arrangement also requires investors to further evaluate: whether the strategic investment is a recognition of Anthropic's business prospects, or an industrial chain layout carried out by large tech companies to lock in AI computing power demand?

03 Computing Power Bill Approaches Trillions of Dollars

The core supporting Anthropic's trillion-dollar valuation is still the rapid expansion of the Claude business.

The latest offering documents show that in the first three quarters ending September 30, 2026, Anthropic achieved revenue of $332.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of about 12 times. Among them, the revenue in the third quarter reached $169.6 billion, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 47%. By the end of September, the company's revenue in the past 12 months was about $350 billion.

The number of enterprise customers is also increasing rapidly. By the end of September, there were more than 11,900 customers contributing at least $100,000 in revenue in the past 12 months, of which more than 1,900 customers contributed more than $1 million in revenue, and about 250 customers contributed more than $10 million in revenue.

This shows that Claude is no longer just a chat tool for individual users, but has gradually built up large-scale revenue in enterprise software, development tools and business workflows.

On the other side of revenue growth, however, is the rapid expansion of computing power costs.

In the third quarter, Anthropic's computing and infrastructure costs reached about $99 billion. As the demand for model training and reasoning continues to grow, the company needs to continuously purchase more computing resources. In the same period, the gross profit margin of the computing business dropped from 52% in the second quarter to 42%, and the adjusted operating profit margin also dropped from 19% to 15%.

Revenue is growing, but profit margins are squeezed by computing power costs.

Greater pressure comes from long-term contracts.

According to the prospectus updated on November 10, by the end of September 2026 and thereafter, the total amount of signed procurement commitments and lease agreements of Anthropic is about $9.009 trillion, the vast majority of which are related to computing power and infrastructure.

Among them, about $4.516 trillion is expected to occur before the end of 2030, and most of the rest are distributed from 2031 to 2045. According to the statistical caliber of the prospectus, about $707 billion will mature within 12 months after September 30, 2026.

It needs to be explained here that $9.009 trillion is not the debt that Anthropic has formed at present, nor is it the amount that needs to be paid immediately, but the total amount of signed long-term procurement and lease arrangements. Some of these commitments are still attached with termination rights or performance conditions.

Anthropic has about $95.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and $36.3 billion in short-term investments, with a considerable scale of capital reserves. However, in the face of long-term infrastructure investment, the company still needs to rely on continuously growing revenue and financing capabilities to maintain expansion.

Three Tests Behind the Trillion-Dollar Valuation

Anthropic's IPO will actually become an important opportunity for the public market to test the AI business model.

The first is whether growth can be sustained. The year-on-year revenue growth of about 12 times in the first three quarters is enough to prove that Claude is rapidly opening up the market. However, the quarter-on-quarter revenue growth rate in the third quarter was 47%, lower than the 144% in the second quarter. As the revenue base continues to expand, it will become more difficult to maintain an extremely high growth rate in the future.

The second is whether computing power investment can be converted into profits. The long-term procurement and lease commitment of about $9.009 trillion means that Anthropic must continuously expand its business revenue to support the huge infrastructure system. The decline in the gross profit margin of the computing business in the third quarter also shows that revenue growth will not automatically translate into higher profits.

The last is corporate governance and shareholder rights. Anthropic has adopted a multi-class share structure. The offering documents show that the F-class special shares held by founder-related entities will own 50.1% of the total voting rights after the transaction is completed. The long-term interest trust has important influence on the composition of the board of directors and the appointment and removal of directors.

This means that although public market investors can share the economic benefits brought by the company's growth, they may not have the control right matching their shareholding ratio.

For a company with AI safety as its core philosophy, the post-listing governance structure will also become an issue that investors continue to pay attention to.

Looking back at this Anthropic IPO, what is most worth paying attention to is not whether it can become another trillion-dollar company, but whether it can prove that AI commercialization has entered a stage where profits can be created sustainably.

Previously, the market was willing to pay a high premium for model capabilities, user growth and future imagination. Now, as Anthropic puts hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, nearly trillion-dollar long-term computing power commitments and public market valuations on the table at the same time, investors finally have the opportunity to price this business model more completely.

The capital carnival of the AI industry is entering the next stage.

Special translator Jin Lu also contributed to this article

This article is from "Tencent Tech", written by Li Hailun, edited by Xu Qingyang, authorized for release by 36Kr.