Anthropic Puts Amodei and Dimon on Noon Livestream to Sell IPO Priced at $70 to $78

Since Anthropic launched its roadshow on Tuesday, Nov. 10, the company has moved to the sales-pitch phase of what could be the largest IPO on record. Today, Nov. 13, it has a livestream set for 12 p.m. ET with CEO Dario Amodei and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

Bloomberg first reported the event, citing a person familiar with the plans. It is modeled on the June appearance by Elon Musk during SpaceX's listing, which raised $86.2 billion including overallotment shares. Anthropic's version is meant to be less extravagant. Anthropic and JPMorgan declined to comment on the arrangements.

The terms on the table

Anthropic's amended registration statement offers 825 million Class A shares at an expected $70 to $78 each. Anthropic is selling 801,351,354 of them. Existing stockholders are selling 23,648,646, and Anthropic gets no proceeds from those. At the top of the range, the 825 million shares work out to about $64.4 billion.

The company has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker "ANT." The registration statement has been filed with the SEC but has not become effective, so no shares can be sold yet.

An earlier draft told a different story. A prospectus sent to underwriters showed about 867 million shares at $70 to $80, or roughly $69.36 billion at the top, according to people familiar with the matter cited by BigGo Finance. The draft was pulled shortly after distribution. The company said only that some information in it was incorrect, and it did not say whether the error was in the share count, the price range or the total. Anthropic has not publicly explained the discrepancy.

Valuation has slid

Anthropic's most recent private round valued it at $965 billion. The IPO range implies a valuation of roughly $1 trillion, and about $1.4 trillion fully diluted, according to ZeroHedge's calculation.

That is well below where talks once stood. People familiar with the matter said potential investors were discussing $1.1 trillion to $1.3 trillion after the Nov. 3 midterm elections forced a rethink of AI valuations. Bloomberg reported that figure. BigGo, citing the same type of sourcing, says the number had slid from a peak near $2 trillion.

A $26 billion private placement is separate from the public offering. AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC agreed to buy Class N common stock at the IPO price. The purchase depends on the IPO closing.

Some market commentators see a problem in that. ZeroHedge describes "the usual circular-financing concerns around the AI complex," where suppliers and customers of Anthropic's computing power also buy its stock. The filing itself says only that the buyers committed $26 billion at the IPO price, contingent on completion.

Who is running the deal

Goldman Sachs holds the lead-left role and Morgan Stanley is stabilization agent, according to Anthropic's SEC filing. JPMorgan is one of 22 banks on the deal and is handling U.S. retail marketing and allocations. Citigroup is running the retail offering in the UK, Canada, Japan, Australia and parts of Europe.

Anthropic has weighed setting aside roughly 15% to 20% of the offered shares for retail buyers. JPMorgan is also a customer. Anthropic said in a post this week that the bank has rolled out Claude Code well beyond its software engineers.

People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Anthropic wants to price before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. BigGo's sourcing puts trading as early as next Thursday or Friday, Nov. 19 or 20.

Amodei's own caution

The CEO headlining the roadshow has been openly cautious about the timeline. Amodei has said the events of next year are highly uncertain, according to Crypto Briefing. In a September essay, he argued for a slower pace of improvement in AI capabilities so that safety and alignment work can keep up. He cautioned against moving too fast toward systems capable of large-scale cyberattacks.

The evidence behind that caution is fresh. METR, an AI evaluation group, published a November analysis of Anthropic's internal data. It found AI is boosting research and development to roughly double its historical pace, with a possible range of 1.3x to 3x. METR says that kind of acceleration could bring meaningful progress toward recursive self-improvement, meaning AI systems that help build better AI systems, by 2027.

The AI Futures Project also updated its forecast in November. Its median estimate now puts a superhuman AI researcher in 2027, absent deliberate efforts to slow things down.

Anthropic's early November S-1 filings indicate the company could soon reach the Responsible Scaling Policy threshold tied to accelerated AI progress, per Crypto Briefing's reading of the documents. That policy is Anthropic's internal rulebook for when stronger safety measures must kick in.

Nvidia overhang

Nvidia's Jensen Huang is facing a board investigation over an admitted affair with an executive who was reportedly working with Chinese intelligence, according to CNN. Nvidia's board has hired outside counsel, per 24/7 Wall St. Nvidia is also one of the cornerstone buyers in Anthropic's $26 billion placement, and 24/7 Wall St. puts its share at $10 billion.

Dimon has previously warned that advanced models, including Anthropic's, have sharply raised cybersecurity risks, ZeroHedge notes. It is unclear whether that, or the valuation reset, comes up in the conversation with Amodei on camera.

The next concrete marker is the registration statement. It must be declared effective by the SEC before Anthropic can set a final price within the $70 to $78 range, and that is expected before Thanksgiving.