Anthropic targets Nasdaq IPO at lower valuation amid market cooling

The Race to the Nasdaq

Anthropic is moving forward with its plans to list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market before the Thanksgiving holiday. The company intends to raise between $80 billion and $100 billion during this process. This move comes at a time when the broader tech market has experienced a significant selloff.

Investors are now projecting a valuation for Anthropic between $1.25 trillion and $1.75 trillion. This is a notable decrease from the $2 trillion figure that some of the most optimistic investors had suggested just a few weeks ago. Some market participants have even discussed the possibility of valuations falling as low as $1.1 trillion.

The company's filing on November 2, 2026, confirms its intent to enter the public market. While the initial enthusiasm for AI has cooled, Anthropic is still pushing ahead to secure its position as a major public entity. This transition marks a shift from private funding to the scrutiny of public markets.

Revenue and Infrastructure

Anthropic has shown steady growth in its financial performance leading up to this launch. The company's annualized reported revenue reached about $81 billion, an increase from the roughly $65 billion reported at the end of July. Most of this revenue is generated from selling Claude products and services to other businesses.

To support this growth, Anthropic has secured a massive amount of capital for its physical needs. The company's paperwork shows it has roughly $895.4 billion tied up in contracts and leases for hardware and facilities as of September 30. Nearly all of these agreements are dedicated to compute and infrastructure, highlighting the capital-intensive nature of the AI industry.

The company's strategy involves expanding its own data-center footprint and securing more compute power. How Anthropic chooses to allocate the proceeds from its IPO between these infrastructure needs and product development will be a key factor for its future. These decisions will directly influence the capabilities of tools like Claude Code.

Public Backlash and Risks

The company faces a growing headwind in the form of organized opposition to AI data centers. During the midterms, voters rejected data center expansion in 40 out of 41 local ballot measures across 10 states. Surveys also show that 71% of Americans oppose having an AI data center in their local area, with nearly half expressing strong opposition.

Anthropic's own S-1 prospectus acknowledges that this opposition is becoming increasingly organized across different jurisdictions. The filing warns that the company's public profile could lead to even more scrutiny regarding its associated projects. This tension between the need for massive infrastructure and public resistance creates a complex environment for the new public company.

Public-company status will also bring a new level of transparency and regulatory oversight. Anthropic will be subject to SEC scrutiny, potential shareholder lawsuits, and activist pressure. Any safety incidents involving Claude will now be amplified in quarterly filings, making the company's internal processes a matter of public record.

The AI Market Landscape

Anthropic's situation reflects a broader cooling of the AI sector, which includes its chief rival, OpenAI. OpenAI recently secured just $11 billion of its $30 billion goal at a $1.25 trillion valuation. This fell short of their original ambitions and forced the company to seek out wealthy individual investors to fill the gap.

The broader market has been impacted by rising borrowing costs and heavy spending plans on AI. These factors, combined with recent election results, contributed to a selloff in the Nasdaq 100. The market is currently trying to figure out how to price the massive costs associated with building out AI technology.

If Anthropic successfully completes its IPO, it will become the first pure-play AI company on public markets. This would give it a significant war chest that its private rivals might not be able to match. However, if the IPO struggles, it may leave the door open for competitors like Google and OpenAI to capture more of the enterprise market.