According to Bloomberg, the subscription orders received by Anthropic for this IPO were approximately six times the number of shares available.
Figures in the prospectus: The company and its co-founders could raise up to $64.4 billion through the IPO, plus an additional $26 billion in private placements, for a combined total of up to $90.4 billion. If all is completed, it will surpass SpaceX's IPO and become the largest public transaction in history. The fully diluted target valuation is about $1.4 trillion and it plans to list on Nasdaq on November 19.
The direct consequence of being six times overbought is order cancellation. The underwriting house has already warned in advance: existing shareholders will be given priority, and new investors will most likely receive less than expected.
The most subtle is Nvidia. It plans to subscribe for about $10 billion of that $26 billion private placement. Nvidia is both Anthropic's chip supplier and strategic partner, and now it is a major shareholder - this is exactly the kind of cycle of "selling chips and being a financier" that the newly appointed interim CEO Kress has been wary of. Whether this money will eventually be realized as originally planned is a detail worth keeping an eye on.
The core number underpinning the valuation is revenue run rate: about $81 billion as of October 31, which was $10 billion more than at the end of September. Please note that this is an annualized amount based on recent subscriptions and consumption, not actual money received in a year.
Compare it to next door. OpenAI’s third-quarter revenue was approximately US$10 billion, with an operating loss of US$10.9 billion, and its IPO is expected in 2027. The accounting standards of the two companies are different, and the profit margins cannot be directly compared. But once the two accounts are made public, it will be impossible to hide who is better at spending money.