Anthropic sets IPO price range of $70 to $78, looks to start trading Nov. 19, sources say

Anthropic said it will offer 825 million shares in its upcoming IPO at a price range between $70 to $78 per share, according to an updated filing on Tuesday, bringing the five-year-old artificial intelligence lab a step closer to a potentially historic Nasdaq debut.

At the high end of the range, Anthropic would net up to $64.35 billion in proceeds through the IPO. The company could end up being worth up to $1.405 trillion on a fully diluted basis, up from the $965 billion valuation it announced as part of a funding round in May.

As Anthropic executives get set to pitch the offering to investors, they have to contend with a tumultuous political environment , following last week's midterm elections that included a Democratic sweep in Congress and the passage of numerous statewide ballot measures that could slow the AI buildout. They're also facing a public market that's grown increasingly skeptical of the AI trade on concern that rising interest rates will make debt unaffordable for companies that need it for costly infrastructure purchases.

CNBC reported last week that some Anthropic investors were bracing for a lower valuation than had previously been expected. While Anthropic had been looking toward a $2 trillion valuation until recently, shareholders told CNBC that even $1.5 trillion is now in doubt, with one investor calling that number a "stretch."

Should Anthropic reach the Nasdaq this month as planned, under ticker symbol "ANT," the debut would come roughly five months after SpaceX went public in a record offering that raised $85.7 billion. Elon Musk's reusable rocket and AI company has a market cap of just under $2 trillion, around its valuation at the time of the IPO.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei co-founded the AI lab in 2021 after he and a small group of researchers defected from OpenAI , now its chief rival. Anthropic is best known for developing a family of AI models called Claude, and the company primarily sells its products and services to other businesses.

On Monday, Anthropic introduced two new AI models, Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2, the first time the company has released so-called "frontier" models since Amodei called to slow down the pace of AI development in September . Anthropic said the models went through rigorous safety and alignment testing, and that the company developed new evaluations and post-launch monitoring tools ahead of the release.