Anthropic investors dial back valuation expectations amid selloff
The reassessment follows Anthropic's $16.8 billion third-quarter revenue report and a global selloff in AI and semiconductor stocks on Thursday.
Published
Anthropic reported $16.8 billion in third-quarter revenue as its initial public offering nears. Bankers had pegged the listing's valuation as high as $2 trillion, with institutional investors set to meet in San Francisco to weigh the deal.
The pullback came as a global selloff in AI and semiconductor stocks accelerated on Thursday, following a hot inflation reading and growing concern over debt tied to AI infrastructure companies including CoreWeave. South Korea's KOSPI index fell nearly 8 per cent and triggered a circuit breaker, Japan's Nikkei 225 fell about 5 per cent, and US semiconductor stocks were on track to erase roughly $2 trillion in market value, according to market data cited by Reuters and CNN. A closely watched US semiconductor index sank 2.5 per cent, its seventh straight day of declines, as investors moved into bonds. Jefferies chief European economist Mohit Kumar told CNN that a slowdown in the AI infrastructure build-out would imply a sharp slowdown in US growth expectations.
The valuation pullback marks the first concrete sign that the roadshow math behind Anthropic's IPO is cracking, after weeks in which its timeline, its $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion valuation range and compute commitments from Akamai, SpaceX and Broadcom were treated as settled inputs for investors to price. Because the pullback is unfolding alongside a broader market selloff rather than in isolation, it is hard to separate company-specific disappointment from macro pressure. It comes just as institutional meetings and formal marketing were due to begin within weeks, narrowing the window Anthropic has to reset expectations before pricing, with unresolved questions in its prospectus over Pentagon supply-chain and government-relations risk still unaddressed.