Anthropic reportedly sets IPO in motion as investors push below $1.5 trillion target

Anthropic presses ahead with its listing

Anthropic is moving forward with its initial public offering despite a turbulent stretch for technology stocks, according to The Wall Street Journal. TechCrunch relayed the Journal's reporting on November 9, adding that the company intends to publish a valuation range this week and could begin trading as soon as Thursday or Friday of the following week.

The timing is striking. As TechCrunch observes, the debut would arrive shortly after one of the heaviest Nasdaq sell-offs in recent memory, and amid disclosures that a chief executive who has been a central figure in the AI boom had an affair with a suspected Chinese spy. Neither development, apparently, has been enough to knock Anthropic off its timetable.

The valuation negotiation

The real contest is happening over price. According to the Journal, some institutional investors are now pressing for a valuation below the $1.5 trillion target that was under discussion as recently as last week. That figure was itself a marked step down from the roughly $2 trillion number floated a few months earlier, pointing to a steady downward drift in what backers believe the company can command from public markets.

In other words, even before Anthropic names a range, the negotiating band has already compressed significantly — and the pressure from institutions suggests the final mark could land lower still.

The OpenAI yardstick

Anthropic's main rival offers an uncomfortable point of comparison. Per the same reporting, OpenAI was valued at $1.25 trillion last week after raising $11 billion in fresh capital — a round that fell well short of the $20 billion the ChatGPT maker had initially sought. If the sector's most prominent company raised less than it wanted at a lower valuation than once discussed, Anthropic and its bankers are pricing into a noticeably cooler environment than existed even a quarter ago.

Why it matters

Anthropic's debut is shaping up as the most closely watched test of the AI investment cycle to date. As TechCrunch notes, investors will read the final valuation as a gauge of the boom's underlying strength: a pricing near the $1.5 trillion target would signal that appetite for exposure to frontier AI remains intact, while a meaningful markdown — particularly on the heels of OpenAI's smaller-than-hoped raise — would reinforce the sense that private-market enthusiasm is fading.

There is a structural dimension as well. A listing would shift one of the field's two dominant labs out of the world of opaque private rounds and into public-market scrutiny, with regular financial disclosure, retail participation, and a share price that reprices the entire sector in real time. That transition is hard under the best conditions; attempting it right after a major sell-off and a scandal touching the industry makes Anthropic's final pricing a data point that will echo far beyond its own offering.