Anthropic said on Tuesday 10 November that it had launched the investor roadshow for its initial public offering. During the roadshow, the company’s management presents the offering to investors before the share price is set.

The price range is $70–78 and the listing venue is Nasdaq (ANT), the company said in a press release. Anthropic is selling 801,351,354 Class A shares itself, and existing shareholders are selling 23,648,646. Anthropic plans to give the underwriters, led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, a 30-day option to buy up to 123.75 million additional shares. No shares may be sold and no offers to buy accepted until the registration statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) takes effect.

Anonymous sources told CNBC that the price will be set on 18 November. The same sources said the plan is to allocate about 20 per cent of the shares to retail investors, compared with the usual 5–10 per cent. Investor orders already cover the entire offering within the price range, and institutional demand is stronger than for SpaceX’s offering at the same stage, the sources said.

Two different valuation figures

At the top of the range, the offering would raise $64.35 billion. CNBC and TechCrunch estimate the company’s value at that price at about $1.4 trillion on a fully diluted basis, which also includes shares based on options, for example. The Decoder, citing Reuters, reports a lower figure of up to $1.02 trillion, based on the share count in the prospectus.

Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in its May funding round. CNBC reported that until recently the company had been aiming for a $2 trillion valuation, but shareholders told CNBC that even $1.5 trillion is uncertain.

Seven technology companies invest $26 billion

Anthropic said that AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC will buy $26 billion of Class N shares at the IPO price, CNBC reported. The shares carry no voting rights, and Google and Nvidia are each investing $10 billion, TechCrunch wrote. CNBC said these shares are not subject to the lock-up, which bars shareholders from selling for a set period after the listing. Anthropic expects total net proceeds of $84.6–93.7 billion, TechCrunch reported. The higher figure assumes the underwriters exercise their option on additional shares.

The founders’ Class F share holds 50.1 per cent of the voting power and the company’s Long-Term Benefit Trust elects a majority of the board, so Class A buyers will have limited influence, TechCrunch reported.

Revenue grows, commitments around $900 billion

Anthropic’s updated prospectus put run-rate revenue at about $81 billion at the end of October, CNBC and TechCrunch reported. That is $10 billion more than a month earlier. Third-quarter revenue was about $17 billion. The Decoder said it rose 47 per cent from the previous quarter, after growth of 144 per cent in the quarter before that.

The net loss for January–September was $104 billion. Most of it came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes and derivative liabilities, CNBC said. TechCrunch reported compute and infrastructure commitments of $900.9 billion and cash and short-term investments of almost $132 billion.

On Thursday the Nasdaq index had its steepest fall in 19 months as Democratic gains in the midterm elections raised fears of tighter regulation of data centre construction, The Decoder reported.