IPO Market Stalls as Oura, Holtec and SB Energy Pull Back, With Anthropic Eyeing a Mid-November Launch

Since Anthropic confidentially filed to go public in June, the new-issue calendar has gone from busy to stalled. Dealmakers who expected a healthy fourth quarter are now pushing launches into 2027.

The pullbacks

Smart-ring maker Oura postponed its Nasdaq listing hours before it was set to price, citing "uncertainty in the IPO market." The company had sought to raise up to $2.2 billion at a valuation of roughly $15 billion, and said demand was strong. Orders ran about four times the shares on offer, but buyers balked at the price and at Oura's dependence on a single product, according to the NY Post.

Holtec Nuclear suspended a planned $825 million IPO on Sept. 17. SoftBank delayed the listing of data-center firm SB Energy after investors challenged a valuation topping $50 billion. OpenAI has pushed its own IPO into next year, and CEO Sam Altman has said going public now would be ill-advised.

An ECM banker quoted by ION Analytics' ECM Pulse said Oura "was just pushed too hard." Airtel Mobile is still going ahead, but with a deliberately conservative structure and a generous price.

Rates, oil and a bigger discount

The backdrop is rough. Sovereign bond yields have jumped in recent weeks as traders adjust to the energy shock from the Iran war and to central bank rate hikes.

"You've got rising rates. You've got the war in Iran. You've got the sort of shakier economy ex-AI," Heath Terry, head of AI investment research at Citi, told CNN. He was speaking about IPOs generally, not specific companies.

Deutsche Bank analysts Marion Laboure and Camilla Siazon also pointed to the coming U.S. midterm elections, ongoing geopolitical conflict and higher oil prices. Their client note said investor pushback on tech valuations began this summer, over price tags and the sustainability of AI spending.

The price of admission has risen. Traditional IPOs usually price at a 10% to 15% discount, but buyers now want closer to 20%, said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital.

One banker told ECM Pulse that months of investor feedback on pricing is "essentially irrelevant" after the speed of the yield move. Another said block trades and convertibles are still working, "but the product that is being hit hardest by this is IPOs."

An investor quoted by ECM Pulse added: "It makes IPOs a lot trickier when investors have safer places to park their money."

Is Anthropic the cause?

Some bankers argue Anthropic is sucking the oxygen out of the market, according to the NY Post. Kennedy rejects that. "I don't see Anthropic as being this black hole that prevents other companies from going public," he told the paper. "If they could get the valuation they wanted, they'd move forward."

Jay Ritter, a University of Florida finance professor who has studied IPOs for decades, sees a split. Investors will pay up for frontier AI models like Anthropic's, he said, but treat capital-intensive data-center infrastructure as closer to a commodity.

What Anthropic is planning

Anthropic is seeking to begin formal marketing as soon as the week of Nov. 9, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to Bloomberg News. That would put first trades ahead of Thanksgiving on Nov. 26, when dealmaking typically slows. The sources said a debut by the end of 2026 is still expected, and that the timeline could shift.

The target is up to $100 billion raised at a valuation of about $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion, according to the sources and to the Wall Street Journal. Prospective investors see that range as fair, some of the sources said. A raise of that size would top SpaceX's June IPO, which brought in roughly $86 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation. Saudi Aramco's roughly $29 billion in 2019 was the next largest.

The financials are lopsided. Documents seen by Bloomberg show 2025 revenue of about $4.6 billion, up from $386 million a year earlier, and an operating loss above $8 billion. Net loss was nearly $42 billion, about five times the roughly $8.3 billion of 2024. Bloomberg's reporting says the bulk of the net loss came from changes in liabilities.

Safety questions

Safety is the other overhang. CEO Dario Amodei published an essay arguing that the pace of new AI models should be slowed. He and other tech leaders signed a White House accord to "self-police" AI development. Former employees have also raised concerns, according to CNN.

The Straits Times, citing Bloomberg, linked the scrutiny to a string of hacking incidents by rogue AI agents. Investors do not appear to have been put off so far, the sources said.

What comes next

Anthropic has not publicly set a pricing date. Airtel Mobile's conservatively priced deal will show whether any IPO can clear at current yields. Whether Anthropic holds to the week of Nov. 9 depends on bond markets that have repriced several times in recent weeks.