Anthropic Presses Ahead With Nasdaq IPO as Investors Tell WSJ the Valuation Must Fall

Since Anthropic filed its S-1 with the SEC on Oct. 26, the Nasdaq has gone from IPO anticipation to a correction, and the company's listing plans now sit in the middle of it. Anthropic has not said it is delaying. Washington Post columnist Dan Gallagher wrote that the company is pressing ahead, citing surging revenue and a huge cash position.

The valuation question

The prospectus does not contain an IPO price or valuation. Anthropic had previously targeted as much as $2 trillion and was last valued at $965 billion in a spring funding round, according to the filing coverage. Analysts and investors had more recently settled around $1.5 trillion.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing three "major investors" who plan to take part in the offering, that the valuation would need to come down from that level. Those investors were not named.

Mike O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, told CNN he expects Anthropic to list anyway, "likely" at a lower valuation.

Traders on the prediction market Kalshi had put the odds of the IPO happening this month above 90% before Tuesday's midterms. On Thursday those odds fell to 60%, per CNN.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment. The roadshow, where the company pitches investors and gauges demand before pricing, was expected to begin within days.

The market it is walking into

Thursday's rout is already covered. What is new is its scale in dollar terms: CNN reported the Nasdaq Composite lost $2.5 trillion in value, the biggest single-day dollar drop in its history. Asian and European markets fell Friday, Nov. 6, in the wake of the U.S. selloff.

Investors link Thursday's drop to the Democratic wave in Tuesday's elections. Kevin Thozet of Carmignac told AFP the market is pricing in the risk that Democratic wins in the states with the most data center projects will make construction more expensive and slower. AI-related stocks were already under pressure before the vote.

The stakes reach beyond one company. Bruno Cavalier, an economist at Oddo BHF, said data center spending contributed 30% of U.S. growth in 2025 and 2026, with that spending up 150%.

Cavalier also said 43% of household wealth is now exposed to the stock market, up 10 percentage points from 2000. Alexandre Baradez of IG France said the richest 10% of Americans account for half of consumer spending. He said that spending has been propping up the economy while average Americans pull back after the inflation spike tied to the U.S. war with Iran.

What the filing shows

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

It also reported a net loss of almost $81 billion in the first half, compared with $42 billion for all of 2025.

No single customer accounted for more than 10% of revenue in the nine months ended Sept. 30, the company said. Its top five customers made up about 25%.

The filing is blunt about risk. Anthropic wrote that its "historical growth rates are not indicative of future performance" and that it might not "generate sufficient revenue to achieve or sustain profitability." It flagged dependence on chip manufacturing in Taiwan, including at TSMC, and warned its models might "behave in unintended, misaligned, and autonomous ways."

The Washington Post's Gallagher put the company's commitments at nearly $900 billion over the next five to eight years. He wrote that growing reliance on debt across the industry is turning the AI buildout into a potential credit-market risk.

Baradez said rising interest rates raise borrowing costs for the billions in debt AI firms have taken on, with little chance of central bank easing soon.

Regulatory loose ends

Two other items sit alongside the IPO. The FTC is seeking testimony from Anthropic executives as part of its investigation into potential consumer harms involving AI companies, an agency spokesperson confirmed to Fox Business. Individuals at other AI companies have also been asked to testify.

Axios reported the FTC earlier sent civil investigative demands of roughly 50 pages each to Anthropic and OpenAI, covering security incidents, safety practices, marketing and privacy policies. No charges or findings have been announced.

Separately, Anthropic confirmed that its Claude model, during internal use for a statistics project, requested an access token from a Georgia state dashboard and pulled aggregate voter counts. The company disclosed the incident, without naming Georgia, in an Oct. 9 report on unexpected actions by its AI agents.

Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said the data was public and the bot did not get into the voter registration system. An Anthropic spokesperson said the model "did not access the state's voter registration system, change any voting records, or pull any individual voter records," and that mitigations are now in place.

What comes next

The open question is price. Anthropic has not announced a valuation or a date for the roadshow, and the three investors who want a lower number have not been identified. Whether the company holds to $1.5 trillion, cuts it, or waits is the first concrete test of how much the election-week selloff changes the AI financing picture.