Anthropic presses on with a pre-Thanksgiving IPO, and settles for a lower price range

Anthropic isn't waiting for the market to calm down. The company still plans to go public before Thanksgiving, but has lowered its sights on price, Matthias Bastian reports for The Decoder, citing investors quoted by the Financial Times.

The new range

Anthropic now aims to raise $80 to $100 billion at a valuation of $1.25 to $1.75 trillion. That's above its current $965 billion, but short of the $2 trillion the most bullish investors had hoped for. Its annualized revenue has climbed to around $81 billion; at the end of July it was about $65 billion.

Earlier this week, investors were balking at $1.5 trillion, and one floated $1 trillion. A range that starts at $1.25 trillion meets them partway.

The market around it

Rising borrowing costs and huge AI spending plans set off a tech selloff this week, and the Democratic midterm wins, with promises to slow data center construction, sped it up. The Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4% on Thursday and recovered some on Friday.

OpenAI is adjusting too. According to The Decoder, it lowered the valuation target for its funding round to $1.25 trillion from $1.4 trillion, and so far has brought in roughly one third of the $30 billion it first went after.

What it means

Both leading labs are still being valued above a trillion dollars, so nobody should read this as a collapse. But the direction is clear: investors want to see revenue catching up with spending, and they've stopped paying any price for the AI story. Anthropic's $16 billion jump in annualized revenue in about three months is the strongest argument it has.

For developers building on Claude, a public Anthropic means quarterly reports, which means much more visibility into pricing pressure and where the company is putting its money.

Scoreboard update: Draw. Anthropic still goes for a trillion-dollar listing, and investors still talk the price down.

Stay undead.