Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI models, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, set a price range for its first sale of shares to the public: $70 to $78 a share. The range is in an updated version of its S-1, the form a company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission before it sells stock to the public for the first time. Anthropic and some of its shareholders plan to sell 825 million shares on the Nasdaq stock market under the symbol ANT.
Of those shares, 801.4 million are new shares from Anthropic and 23.6 million come from existing shareholders. Anthropic gets none of the money from those. At $78, the 801.4 million new shares would bring Anthropic about $62.5 billion before fees, and at $70 about $56.1 billion. If demand is strong enough that the banks running the sale sell more than 825 million shares, they can buy up to 123.75 million more from Anthropic.
A price range is an estimate, not the final price. The filing says the price will be set in talks among Anthropic, the selling shareholders and the banks, weighing market conditions, Anthropic's past results and its prospects. It also says the information in this early version of the prospectus, the document that describes the sale to buyers, is not complete and may change.
Seven big tech companies have agreed to buy $26.0 billion more of Anthropic's stock in a separate, private sale at the same price, right after the public sale closes. Google and NVIDIA would each put in about $10 billion, AMD about $2.5 billion, Broadcom, Micron and Microsoft about $1 billion each, and TSMC about $500 million. Those shares carry no votes except where the law requires them. AMD's purchase counts toward stock it had already agreed to buy under a hardware supply deal with Anthropic, and Google's uses up an option to buy up to $10 billion that Anthropic had already disclosed, part of an investment Google had promised. The private sale still needs approval from Anthropic's shareholders, which the company expects to get before that sale closes, but the public sale does not depend on it.
At the middle of the range, $74 a share, Anthropic expects to take in about $84.6 billion from the two sales after fees and costs. If the banks buy all the extra shares, that rises to about $93.7 billion. Anthropic says it will use the money for general purposes, including computing power and the systems that run it, and hiring. Some of Anthropic's board members, and firms tied to them, have said they may buy up to $303 million of the public shares, though that is not a firm promise.
About 13.1 billion Anthropic shares would exist once both sales close. At $78 each they would be worth about $1.02 trillion, and at $70 about $917 billion. Counting stock promised to employees and others that has not yet become shares, a news report puts the value at up to $1.4 trillion, up from the $965 billion investors valued Anthropic at in May.
Buyers of the public shares get one vote per share, but control stays with the founders and a special trust. A company owned at first by Anthropic's seven co-founders, including chief executive Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei, will hold a single share carrying 50.1% of the votes when shareholders vote, including on the board seats the trust does not fill. A trust Anthropic created to help it balance profit against its stated purpose, the responsible development of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity, generally elects a majority of Anthropic's board.
The filing leaves the date the shares change hands blank. A news report says trading is likely to start the week of Nov. 16. The final price and the number of shares sold are not yet set.