12 hours ago - Business

Anthropic seeks to be valued at more than $1 trillion

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

Anthropic said on Tuesday that it will seek to raise up to $62.5 billion in its IPO at a market cap that could top $1 trillion.

Why it matters: This would be one of the largest IPOs ever, but smaller than some had expected.

How it works: As with any IPO, the math is complicated by a number of factors.

The company is selling about 801.4 million Class A shares at a range of $70 to $78 per share. That's the source of the $62.5 billion figure.
But there are other classes of stock outstanding too — plus, if the IPO is successful, the underwriters have the option to buy even more Class A stock on top of what's being offered.
If they do so, when all is said and done, Anthropic says it'll have about 13.09 billion shares of various classes of stock outstanding, which gets to a valuation of around $1.03 trillion.

The company has also issued stock options — lots of them, and if those are exercised, more shares will get issued.

That eventual "fully diluted value" (the value of all shares that could become outstanding), at the higher end of the range, would be around $1.4 trillion.
There had been earlier speculation that Anthropic could seek a fully diluted valuation of as much as $2 trillion.

What we're watching: Anthropic shares are likely to begin trading sometime next week, amidst wild volatility in the AI trade.

Go deeper: Anthropic's spending commitments surge to nearly $900 billion

This story has been updated with additional details.