Anthropic IPO Terms Put FTX's Former Stake at Up to $35 Billion

Anthropic's proposed IPO price range implies the diluted stake once held by FTX would have a theoretical value of $31.1 billion to $34.7 billion, well above the $1.34 billion the bankruptcy estate collected from selling the shares in 2024.

The company's Tuesday, Nov. 10, amendment to its registration statement proposes a price of $70 to $78 a share. Based on about 13.09 billion shares after the offering, that range implies an equity value of $917 billion to $1.02 trillion. The terms give a more concrete range than earlier coverage of Anthropic's potential IPO valuation.

Anthropic plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters. The proposed offering includes about 825 million Class A shares: the company plans to issue about 801.35 million, while existing shareholders would sell about 23.65 million. Underwriters also have an option to buy an additional 123.75 million shares.

The company also plans a private placement of about $26 billion in nonvoting Class N shares to strategic investors. The planned investors include Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC.

Alameda Research invested about $500 million in Anthropic in 2021 and 2022 for roughly 7.84% of the company, or about 44.54 million Series B shares. That holding is equivalent to about 445.4 million shares on a split-adjusted basis. Later fundraising diluted the stake to about 2.5%.

At $70 a share, the split-adjusted holding would be worth about $31.1 billion; at $78, about $34.7 billion. Those are hypothetical values for shares the FTX estate no longer owns. Anthropic's fully diluted high-end valuation, which includes options and restricted stock, is about $1.4 trillion and would put the same stake at roughly $35 billion.

After FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, its estate sold about 29.5 million shares in March 2024 for $884 million and roughly 15 million more in June for $452 million. The sales brought in about $1.34 billion, or 2.68 times the original investment. Pricing is expected around Wednesday, Nov. 18, with trading potentially beginning Nov. 19.