Reuters reported on the evening of Monday 9 November that it had seen emails Anthropic sent to bankers. The Economic Times, investingLive and Investing.com are among the outlets that have carried the report.

The first email included a copy of the IPO filing as an attachment, Reuters said. According to the filing, Anthropic planned to sell about 867 million Class A shares at $70 to $80 each. At the top of the range, the offering would have raised $69.3 billion. In a follow-up email, the company said the pricing details were inaccurate and promised to update the filing later. Anthropic did not comment to Reuters.

The company did not say which figures were wrong, the Turkish technology site ShiftDelete.Net reported. The retracted figures had already spread: China’s 36Kr published them on Tuesday, citing Sina Finance, without mentioning the retraction.

A company going public files an official registration statement, the S-1, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). ShiftDelete.Net said the S-1 that Anthropic filed on 26 October and its 2 November amendment both leave the price range and share count blank. The filings confirm a planned Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT.

The $26 billion investment is also uncertain

Reports based on the same copy of the filing said Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC would invest a total of $26 billion in Anthropic. They would buy shares directly from Anthropic at the IPO price. ShiftDelete.Net cites CNBC as the source for this. Anthropic has not confirmed the arrangement. investingLive said it is unclear whether the correction also applies to it.

Investors want a lower valuation

Some institutional investors want a valuation below the $1.5 trillion target discussed as recently as last week, The Wall Street Journal reported. That figure was itself considerably below the $2 trillion floated a few months ago. TechCrunch carried the report. Bloomberg reported on 6 November that some prospective buyers had discussed a valuation of $1.1 trillion to $1.3 trillion, ShiftDelete.Net said. A sell-off in AI stocks wiped about $2.5 trillion off the market value of companies in the Nasdaq Composite index last week, investingLive said.

The retraction is open to different readings. investingLive considers the errors procedural rather than a sign of a change of plan. It added, however, that the final terms are now more likely to differ from the figures that circulated. ShiftDelete.Net considers it unusual for the pricing details of such a large offering to be sent and retracted on the same evening. In its view, the terms are still being negotiated.

Timetable

Anthropic plans to set a valuation range this week, and trading is due to begin on Thursday or Friday next week at the earliest, the WSJ reported. ShiftDelete.Net notes that this report was published before the retraction. Nothing so far suggests the timetable will change, however, investingLive said. The Defiant reported on Monday, citing IFR, that Anthropic would launch its IPO on Tuesday.