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[TOKYO] Anthropic aims to raise up to US$3.5 billion from Japanese investors in its initial public offering in the US, bringing the landmark share sale by the artificial intelligence startup to a market starved of first-time offerings.

AI lab Anthropic will sell up to US$3.5 billion worth of shares in Japan, a filing showed on Monday (Nov 2).

The move makes the country, where first-time offerings have dried up to a 14-year low, one of the few markets whose investors will have direct access to the mega IPO. Apart from Japan, investors in Australia, Canada and parts of Europe will also be able to buy into the initial share sale of the Claude chatbot maker.

The new shares issued to Japanese investors will go to raising working capital and funding operating expenses and capital expenditure, the filing said.

The filing did not state the size or valuation of the IPO. Some investors have discussed a valuation of about US$1.5 trillion for the company, Reuters has reported.

At SpaceX’s IPO in June – the world’s largest ever – investors in Japan secured shares worth US$2.2 billion of US$75 billion raised.

Mizuho Securities will manage the Japanese portion of the share sale, while Goldman Sachs Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities and Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities are among companies that will handle investor orders, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.

Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are among the underwriters of the deal.

Anthropic filed for the long-awaited IPO in October as companies rush to tap equity markets.

With Meta Platforms seeking to raise as much as US$95 billion from selling common and preferred stock and Alphabet aiming for up to US$85 billion in equity financing, Anthropic’s IPO will test investor appetite for a wave of new shares of AI-related shares. REUTERS, BLOOMBERG