Key progress has been reported regarding Anthropic's IPO: the plan will allow existing shareholders to cash out or extend the lock-up period, and the listing is expected to be launched as early as the end of September.
Key updates have emerged again regarding Anthropic's IPO process.
A Wednesday report on August 27 by tech media outlet The Information (US Eastern Time) states that Anthropic is considering allowing existing shareholders to sell part of their shares in the IPO, and is concurrently researching the setting of a lock-up period of more than 180 days, to meet partial monetization demands from early investors and employees, while controlling post-listing stock supply and price volatility.
The report notes that Anthropic plans to publicly disclose its IPO prospectus after Labor Day in the US, i.e., after September 7, and intends to hold an investor day in mid-September to introduce the company to potential investors and research analysts. The current targeted listing window for the company is late September or early October, though the final timeline remains subject to adjustment.
Market expectations for Anthropic's upcoming listing are also rising. The official social media account of prediction market Polymarket posted with an illustration during the US midday trading session this Thursday, stating that the market currently believes the probability of Anthropic completing its IPO before October has risen to 86%.
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Proposed to allow existing shareholders to sell shares in the IPO
According to The Information's report, Anthropic is considering allowing some existing shareholders to sell shares directly at the time of IPO issuance, which means its IPO may include both new shares issued by the company and existing shares sold by current shareholders.
The exact size of shares that will ultimately be allowed to be sold, as well as which shareholders are eligible to participate, remains unclear at present.
If this plan is implemented, Anthropic will take a different approach from some of the large tech IPOs this year. The Information previously mentioned that neither SpaceX nor Cerebras allowed existing shareholders to sell shares during the IPO phase, while the listings of large tech companies such as CoreWeave and Figma in recent years included arrangements for existing share sales.
For Anthropic, allowing some early shareholders to cash out during the IPO phase also helps unlock a large amount of book gains accumulated by early investors and employees in advance. The company's valuation has risen rapidly over the past two years, and reached approximately 96.5 billion US dollars at the time of its latest financing round in May this year.
However, the sale of shares by insiders during the IPO phase may also send negative signals to the market, as investors may interpret this as early shareholders looking to cash in their returns as soon as the company goes public. Therefore, Anthropic is also considering adopting more stringent lock-up arrangements to reduce selling pressure after listing.
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Lock-up period may exceed 180 days
The Information states that Anthropic is considering setting a lock-up period of more than 180 days for at least some of its shareholders.
180 days is a relatively common lock-up period in traditional IPOs, which is mainly designed to prevent insiders and early investors from selling their shares in a concentrated manner right after the company goes public, so as to avoid impacting the stock price.
If Anthropic allows some shareholders to sell shares during the IPO phase while imposing a longer lock-up period on the remaining shares, the company can disperse stock supply across different time periods to a certain extent, and reduce the concentrated selling pressure that may emerge in the initial post-listing period and the lock-up expiration window.
This is particularly important for Anthropic. As one of the AI startups with the highest valuation in the world at present, the scale of its IPO and market attention are likely to far exceed those of ordinary tech companies. Once a large number of early investors cash out in a concentrated manner after listing, stock price volatility may be significantly amplified.
The Information also previously reported that Anthropic is considering requiring employees to sell stocks through pre-set trading plans, instead of relying entirely on trading windows after financial report releases. This arrangement also helps the company manage insider stock trading in a more orderly manner after listing.
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Prospectus may be unveiled right after US Labor Day
In terms of the IPO timeline, The Information notes that Anthropic plans to publicly disclose its prospectus after US Labor Day, and intends to hold an investor day in mid-September.
According to the current plan, the company may complete its IPO in late September or early October.
Shay Boloor from Futurum Equities also believes that Anthropic's IPO documents may be released as early as September, and the company may go public at the end of September. Data released by Polymarket's official account on Wednesday shows that the market currently believes the probability of Anthropic completing its IPO before October has reached 86%.
If Anthropic moves forward according to this timeline, its prospectus will become the focus of market attention in the coming weeks. At that time, the company's specific revenue growth rate, profitability, computing power investment, equity structure and IPO scale will all provide more direct basis for the market to judge its final valuation.
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Market bets on a valuation exceeding 1 trillion US dollars
The reason why Anthropic's IPO has attracted so much attention is that it is likely to become one of the largest tech company IPOs in history.
Yahoo Finance previously cited general market expectations that Anthropic's listing valuation may reach around 1 trillion US dollars. The Information also previously reported that bankers involved in the IPO preparation had discussed a valuation of about 1.5 trillion US dollars, and some insiders even believed that the valuation could reach 2 trillion US dollars.
Behind this valuation expectation is the market's bet on the rapid growth of Anthropic's revenue in the future.
Reuters reported on August 15 that part of Anthropic's IPO valuation depends on its revenue forecast for 2028, and the company expects its 2028 revenue to reach 190 billion to 200 billion US dollars. As of May this year, Anthropic's annualized revenue scale is about 47 billion US dollars.
If the above forecast is eventually included in the prospectus, the capital market will need to judge whether Anthropic can continue to maintain an extremely high revenue growth rate in the next two years, and whether its huge investment in computing power can eventually be converted into sufficient commercial returns.
Therefore, as the prospectus is likely to be unveiled after Labor Day, this high-profile AI super IPO of Anthropic is gradually moving from the private market valuation discussion stage to the public capital market pricing stage.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Wall Street News Max", written by Li Dan, and published by 36Kr with authorization.