Anthropic's IPO Plans Face Mounting Wall Street Pressure

Anthropic wants to maintain its IPO despite the fall of tech values, but its expected valuation has already dropped from about 2000 to 1500 billion dollars. This change not only reflects a less enthusiastic market: investors are beginning to compare Claude’s growth with the colossal cost of the infrastructure needed to support it.

AI: Wall Street No Longer Pays for Growth Without Considering the Bill

The initial schedule planned the investor roadshow launch during the week of November 9, then a listing before Thanksgiving. After the 3200 billion dollar drop suffered by Wall Street, some investors requested a more attractive valuation and considered a delay.

Anthropic would ultimately like to continue the operation. The company would target between 80 and 100 billion dollars of capital raised, for a valuation ranging between 1250 and 1750 billion. The discussed breakeven remains near 1500 billion dollars, well below the 2000 billion dollars still mentioned a few weeks prior.

Several figures explain this rapid revaluation :

• Quarterly revenue reached about 17 billion dollars ;
• Its sequential growth slowed to 47%, after 144% in the second quarter ;
• The net loss of the third quarter amounts to 23.29 billion dollars ;
• Operating loss reached 567 million dollars ;
• Commitments related to computing and infrastructure reach nearly 895.4 billion dollars ;
• Nearly 69.8 billion dollars will have to be spent over the next twelve months ;
• Anthropic incurred an additional 5 billion dollars in IT costs during the quarter.

Growth remains exceptional. Anthropic had more than 11,900 clients each generating at least 100,000 dollars in annual revenue at the end of September, compared to about 1,500 dollars at the end of 2025. However, the question asked by Wall Street has changed. It is no longer enough to show that sales are increasing; it is necessary to explain how much each additional dollar costs.

The 895 Billion Dollars of Commitments Turn the IPO Into a Necessity

Anthropic depends on Amazon, Google, and other partners to access the chips, data centers, and electricity essential to its models. These groups are at once investors, capacity providers, distributors, and potential competitors.

This interdependence increases financial risk. Part of the promised infrastructure relies on funding or guarantees obtained by Anthropic’s partners. If credit becomes more expensive, some projects could be delayed, reduced, or renegotiated.

The company acknowledges this in its stock filing. If funding becomes unavailable or more costly, planned capacities could “be delayed, reassessed, reduced or not delivered”.

This detail changes the nature of the IPO. The operation is not only to offer an exit to early investors nor to give a public value to the shares. According to on-chain data, it must provide Anthropic with enough liquidity to finance its expansion without returning to the market too quickly.

Investors therefore have an unusual balance of power. They know that the company needs capital, that its commitments are considerable, and that AI-related shares have just suffered a violent correction. They can demand a larger discount without necessarily questioning Claude’s potential.

“These companies will be part of the future,” says Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments. He nevertheless expects “some pullback” after the long rise in private valuations.

October Figures Can Now Decide the Price

Investors are still waiting for October’s revenue, left empty in the latest version of the introduction document. This data must show whether the third quarter slowdown was temporary or if it signals a more lasting normalization of growth.

The timing is delicate. Markets no longer only punish loss-making companies. They also penalize companies that finance their data centers through debt, chip suppliers, and energy producers exposed to cutbacks in AI investments.

Nevertheless, Anthropic could choose to move forward quickly with a cautious price. A successful listing would give it access to institutional investors, index funds, and a listed currency to finance future acquisitions. A delay would prolong uncertainty and could strengthen the idea that the private market overvalued AI labs too generously.

The stakes therefore go beyond Anthropic. Its IPO must establish the first true public benchmark for a leading AI model developer. An operation near 1500 billion dollars would still validate an exceptional valuation, but it would also confirm that investors have deducted about 500 billion dollars from the initial ambitions.

The decisive test will not only be the price set before the listing. It will be necessary to observe if the stock holds up afterwards, when investors compare each quarter the revenue growth with the billions spent on computing power. The race for AI thus enters a new phase: one where growth must finally prove it can finance its own cost.