Anthropic tests AI with a deflated stock market launch

BarcelonaAfter months of waiting, Anthropic could burst onto the stock market as early as next week. Last Tuesday, the creator of Claude submitted the final documentation for its initial public offering. The landing on Wall Street, according to several American media outlets, would arrive on Thursday, November 19. The share price of the public offering, which the company will set between $70 and $78, reflects a significant step back from the expectations the market had placed on the lab: an operation of this magnitude would value it at $1.4 trillion, far from the $2 trillion that had been circulating among investors in recent months and even below the most conservative readings, which placed it at $1.5 trillion. “It is normal,” Xavier Brun, director of equity at Trea AM, explains to the ARA newspaper. “A few weeks ago there was a very strong rotation in the sector, and that has left its mark on the value.”

The analysts consulted point to two recent events as the source of the drop in sentiment surrounding Anthropic: the stock market crash of the technological hyperscalers –the giants of data centers and cloud computing, among which stand out Alphabet (Google's parent company), Microsoft, or Amazon– two weeks ago, which made capital tremble; and the resounding result of the midterm elections in the United States, which have left both chambers of Congress in the hands of a Democratic Party more open to regulating AI and its infrastructure.

“The correction in the financial markets of the previous month weighed heavily,” explains Javier Cabrera, an analyst at XTB. Capital trembled, it should be remembered, in the face of the cash hole that massive investments in computing had left in companies like Meta, Amazon, or Alphabet. This unease caused drops in share valuations –Google's parent company, for instance, lost 13% on Thursday after making its quarterly accounts public.

In Brun's opinion, the negative cash flow of “the companies paying for the party” of AI suggests that the investments committed for the coming years, which could approach three trillion dollars by the end of 2028, will be faced “with debt and capital.” “And that has a limit,” the expert observes. The caution, therefore, would have to do with an investment wall that, according to Brun, will arrive in two years.

Demand, skyrocketed

According to the document that Anthropic has presented to the US stock market regulator, the SEC, it will put about 825 million shares on the market, of which about 801 million will be mobilized by the laboratory itself and the remaining 23 million plus will be borne by existing shareholders. With the range of valuations that the tech company foresees, this movement would allow them to raise nearly 64 billion dollars. To this amount should be added a second operation: a private placement of shares destined for giants the size of Nvidia, Microsoft or Google, among others, for a value of 26 billion dollars.

Despite the reduction in expectations in the general value, the stock market launch has strongly attracted potential shareholders. As reported by the Bloomberg agency, the demand for Anthropic's initial public offering (IPO) would have multiplied the original offer by six. Analysts consider that this flood of requests is within the expected: "It is relatively common for North American tech companies," observes Cabrera.

Brun, for his part, links the excess demand to the operations that index funds will have to face once the company accesses the Nasdaq, the New York selective index dominated by technology. "Investors hope to be able to sell the shares later to institutional funds with indexed products," explains the director of equity at Trea, who frames these movements within the "trickery of those seeking to sell at a higher price."

With the mirror of SpaceX in front, the only reference the market has to compare the value of the AI boom, it is difficult to map out the path that Anthropic will follow in the first days of trading. Elon Musk's tech company entered Wall Street shooting up, with a peak that took the share to around 202 dollars to then collapse immediately after.

At the close of Friday's session, the aerospace company's titles were around 138 dollars, slightly above the price of its initial public offering (135 dollars), but far from the trading price of the first day on the floor, which exceeded 160 dollars. According to Cabrera, the start of operations for the creator of Claude will be marked by "a lot of volatility," with possible value increases at the entry, but also intense corrections.