AI bubble or realism? Anthropic targets a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion for its IPO

$1.4 trillion. This is the colossal valuation hoped for by Anthropic for its IPO next week. The company behind artificial intelligence (AI) Claude would then make one of the most important introductions in history.

In a document filed with the American stock market watchdog (SEC), the start-up indicates that it wants to sell 825 million shares at a unit price of between $70 and $78, enough to raise up to $64 billion. To this amount will be added 26 billion from the sale of non-voting shares to the most prominent technology companies - and partners of Anthropic - such as chip specialists Nvidia and AMD or Alphabet, the parent company of Google. At the top of the planned range, the fundraising will allow the creator of Claude to display a valuation of around $1.4 trillion.

A colossal sum for a five-year-old company, but below the record set in June by SpaceX, Elon Musk's jewel, and its 1,770 billion. Stock market turbulence for AISeveral American media had put forward more optimistic estimates, but the start-up is suffering from stock market turbulence in the AI ​​sector, due in particular to the dizzying amounts swallowed up by the development of cutting-edge models. The Democratic victory in the mid-term elections in the United States, with the prospect of tougher regulations for data centers, added to the tension.

However, "there are three giants in which investors have wanted to invest for three years: SpaceX, of course, then Anthropic, and perhaps OpenAI next year", described Art Hogan, analyst for the wealth manager B. Riley Wealth Management, to AFP. “AI could kill us all by the end of the decade”: why the tech giants are jointly raising the threat of artificial intelligence out of control. On the contrary, for Larry Li, founder of the Amino Capital fund, in Palo Alto (California), “a more reasonable valuation is probably healthy for the entire sector”.

“A few big AI companies are sucking up all the capital, which is really not very healthy for the whole ecosystem,” he told AFP at the Web Summit in Lisbon. Anthropic could take its first steps on the Nasdaq as early as mid-November, under the symbol "ANT". Dario Amodei must defend the operation on Friday in New York during a live broadcast with Jamie Dimon, boss of the JPMorgan bank.

“Existential risks” According to the document shared on Tuesday, the company achieved a of 17 billion dollars in the third quarter, compared to 1.4 billion a year earlier. At the rate of its recent revenues, Anthropic projects a turnover (CA) of more than 80 billion over the next twelve months. A good pace for a young company.

Machine-translated from French