Illustration: AI
Anthropic is continuing preparations for its IPO, or initial public offering, TechCrunch reports, citing The Wall Street Journal. Some major investors are pushing for a valuation below $1.5 trillion. Trading could begin next week (techcrunch.com).
What happened
According to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic plans to set its valuation range this week. Trading is scheduled to begin on Thursday or Friday next week. For now, these are plans reported by the newspaper.
As recently as last week, a $1.5 trillion valuation was under discussion. Now some institutional investors are pushing for a lower figure. These are large organizations that invest money.
A few months ago, the figure under discussion was $2 trillion. One detail matters here: even the $1.5 trillion target is substantially below the $2 trillion discussed earlier.
What this means
Investors will use Anthropic’s valuation to gauge the strength of the AI boom. Preparations for Anthropic’s stock market debut continue following one of the Nasdaq’s biggest declines.
For comparison, there is a recent valuation of OpenAI, Anthropic’s main rival. Media reports say the company was valued at $1.25 trillion last week after raising $11 billion. It had initially hoped to raise nearly twice as much, $20 billion.
These sums show the scale of the rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic. Anthropic’s next planned step is to set the valuation range at which it will offer shares to investors.
