Investors balk at Anthropic's $1.5 trillion IPO — one calls it a $1 trillion company

Anthropic's blockbuster IPO is running into trouble before it starts: at least three major investors told The Wall Street Journal the planned $1.5 trillion valuation is too high, with one putting the company closer to $1 trillion — and the raise could shrink from $100 billion to around $80 billion. The pushback follows a sharp selloff in AI stocks and a midterm sweep that has investors questioning new data-center construction.

The awkward part is that Anthropic's numbers keep climbing. Its annualized revenue run rate topped $80 billion at the end of October, up from about $65 billion at the end of July, and the amended S-1 shows $17 billion in third-quarter revenue. But investors are staring past the growth at the other side of the filing: roughly $895 billion in committed spending on chips and compute, much of it take-or-pay, which Michael Burry — the investor famous for shorting the housing market — called a bet of the company's “entire existence” on optimism.

The roadshow was expected to start the week of November 9, with pricing the following week, but some investors now want to see October's results first — a figure the updated S-1 left blank. Morningstar's analyst still expects the listing to go ahead, arguing the selloff alone won't derail it; the open question is whether Anthropic lists smaller, later, or cheaper than the $1.5 trillion plan.