RDDC

By Barbara Kollmeyer

Anthropic reportedly sent out plans for its IPO before having to pull them back, Reuters reported.

In what could be viewed as a rough start to its initial public offering rollout, Claude chatbot maker Anthropic reportedly sent details of its plans to bankers before having to yank them back.

Reuters reported that Anthropic late Monday briefly circulated a copy of a securities filing that revealed plans to sell 843.3 million shares for a price of between $70 and $80 per share, with an additional 23.3 million shares to be sold by existing shareholders. Some $69.3 billion would be raised at the upper end of the pricing range, it said.

However, that information was subsequently retracted via an email stating that said some pricing details were wrong, though without specifics about which part was inaccurate, the report said. The AI company said an update would follow.

It's believed Anthropic is pushing to get its IPO out before Thanksgiving, though investors have become increasingly worried about a possible delay or lower valuation. That's against a backdrop of recent market volatility over concerns about what sweeping Democratic midterm wins could mean to the AI buildout and construction of datacenters.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment by MarketWatch via email.

The Nasdaq Composite COMP surged 2.7% on Monday, rebounding over the past two sessions following a 5.5% wipeout last Thursday, its worst session in a year and a half.

Investors had at one point expected a $2 trillion valuation from Anthropic, which would have surpassed a SpaceX record set earlier this year. Potential investors now believe that valuation needs to come in closer to $1 trillion, given recent market volatility and ebbing appetite for risk, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

While the recent market correction hasn't changed the underlying AI story, it has shifted valuation expectations, said Christian Stocker, lead equity strategist at UniCredit, in a note to clients on Monday.

"Investors might approach this IPO cautiously and if the IPO disappoints, then there might be a more systemic repricing of the AI story. In this sense, this IPO is really a test of how convinced investors are about the pace of this technological transformation," Stocker wrote.

The Reuters report also pointed to $26 billion in investment commitments for a class of common stock reserved for business partners, with Alphabet-owned Google (GOOGL), Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Micron (MU), Broadcom (AVGO), Microsoft (MSFT) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TW:2330) all reportedly listed.

-Barbara Kollmeyer

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