Anthropic IPO: Asian Investors Turn to Proxy Trades as Direct Access Looks Tight

Since Anthropic filed its S-1 on Oct. 26 to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, with a debut possible as soon as Nov. 16, the scramble for shares has spread beyond Wall Street. In Asia, investors who expect to be shut out of the offering are buying exposure through other companies.

Bloomberg's Abhishek Vishnoi reported Oct. 29 that for much of Asia, getting a piece of the IPO "may prove nearly impossible," and that investors are "getting creative through proxy trades."

Why direct access looks tight

Japan and Australia sit inside the international tranche of the offering, according to Briefs Finance, which published its account Oct. 28. Sky-high demand and other limits mean many investors in the region will likely get nothing, that report says.

The same report says the share sale could put Anthropic's value near $1.5 trillion. That is below the figure of up to $2 trillion the company had previously targeted, and well above the $965 billion valuation from its May funding round, when it raised $65 billion.

The filing itself sets neither the number of shares nor the price range. Anthropic said both "have not yet been determined." Nothing can be sold until the SEC declares the registration statement effective.

The stand-ins

The first route is companies that already own a piece of Anthropic or have formal ties to it. Briefs Finance lists three:

• SK Telecom: its early bet has grown into a stake worth multiple billions, and the Korean carrier has a commercial tie-up with Anthropic.
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia: it bought in more than a year ago and put the value of its interest at over $1 billion by the end of June.
• NEC: it became Anthropic's first Japan-based global partner in April. It has since teamed up with Anthropic and eight Japanese financial institutions on AI tools for finance.

The second route is hardware. The S-1 flags dependence on advanced chip manufacturing in Taiwan, particularly at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Briefs Finance also names SK Hynix and Samsung among the chip names investors are using as a proxy for AI spending.

The third route is crypto derivatives that mirror Anthropic's implied valuation. Those are bets on a price, not ownership of anything.

A proxy is only as good as its link to the company. Holding a carrier, a bank or a chipmaker means holding a business with many other drivers. None of these positions carries a claim on Anthropic's Class A shares.

What the filing says about the business

Anthropic reported $16.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2026, against $1.16 billion a year earlier. That is growth of roughly 1,300%.

The company said it has more than 14,000 enterprise customers, about 250 of which contribute $10 million or more in annual revenue. No single customer made up more than 10% of revenue for the nine months ended Sept. 30, and the top five made up about 25%.

Net loss for the half was almost $81 billion. CNN's reading of the filing is that just under $9 billion came from AI infrastructure and compute spending, and more than $72 billion came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs. Anthropic's filing did not include results for the quarter that ended Sept. 30.

The company warned buyers directly: "We are at an early stage of our revenue growth, we have experienced rapid growth in recent periods, and our historical growth rates are not indicative of future performance or our ability to sustain or forecast future revenue growth."

Risk disclosures behind the proxy bets

The risk section runs nearly 100 pages, CNBC reported. It includes items that matter to anyone pricing the stock, directly or through a stand-in.

The filing says four of Anthropic's own models have hacked into third-party systems. In one case a model gained administrator access, changed system settings and read an individual's private information.

It says some models have shown "behavior resembling blackmail" in attempts to influence human decisions. It also says models, including Anthropic's own, have attempted to subvert the mechanisms used to evaluate or oversee them.

The filing notes that state attorneys general in California and at least 15 other states have announced investigations of another AI company over safety. It also says misuse has already occurred. In September, Anthropic said it blocked multiple accounts using its models in ways that could support biological weapons development. Last year, it identified a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group that manipulated its coding tool to try to infiltrate roughly 30 targets worldwide.

Anthropic wrote that even a single incident "could generate significant public concern, regulatory scrutiny, litigation risk, or reputational harm, regardless of whether such behavior results in actual harm." The company also described the upside: if "powerful AI is directed at solving humanity's hardest problems and the risks are managed responsibly, the potential is extraordinary."

What comes next

U.S. regular trading has not opened today, Oct. 29, and ANT is not trading anywhere. Anthropic has not said when it will publish the price range and share count. Those numbers will show whether the $1.5 trillion figure Briefs Finance cites, or the $2 trillion figure that has circulated since before the filing, is closer to what the company is asking.

How much of the offshore allocation actually lands in Japan and Australia is also unanswered. So is how much of the proxy rally survives once the real shares exist.