Key points
- Anthropic's IPO could come before Thanksgiving
- Prospective investors see a valuation near $2 trillion
- Broadcom is raising debt tied to chips for Anthropic
Anthropic is targeting an IPO as soon as mid-November, according to Bloomberg. Formal marketing could begin the week of Nov. 9, putting a trading debut before Thanksgiving on Nov. 26 within reach.
Meanwhile, Broadcom (AVGO) has begun assembling $60 billion in debt to help Anthropic and other companies finance AI chips and infrastructure. Broadcom designs tensor processing units, or TPUs, with Google (GOOGL), and Anthropic has committed to lease computing capacity built on them.
When could Anthropic go public?
Anthropic has invited a select group of institutional investors to an investor day at its San Francisco headquarters on Oct. 14, where they can question senior management.
The IPO had been expected in October, but the company shifted its plans to November. The timetable remains tentative, and an Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment.
How much could Anthropic be worth?
Prospective investors put Anthropic's fair value at $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion, roughly double the $965 billion valuation from its Series H round, which closed May 28. Reuters, which reviewed Anthropic's prospectus in September, put the possible valuation at more than $2 trillion.
Anthropic also expects its share sale to match or exceed the size of SpaceX's IPO. Its prospectus, obtained by Reuters in September, disclosed heavy losses and huge computing commitments.
What is Broadcom's $60 billion for?
The financing has two parts. Banks are preparing to syndicate a $42 billion senior secured tranche. Blackstone is leading an $18 billion junior tranche, putting up $9 billion of its own money and planning to sell the rest to other investors.
Broadcom was seeking more than $60 billion in debt as early as August. The financing report follows the Oct. 1 news that Broadcom agreed to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion, according to Anthropic's prospectus. The loan would cover about a third of a $125.2 billion, five-year lease for computing built on the chips. The reports don't say how the new $60 billion package relates to that loan commitment.
In the prospectus, Anthropic warned that Broadcom's role as both its hardware supplier and a lender creates "potential conflicts of interest" that could affect its access to computing power.
Broadcom shares were up 2.4% at $351.83 as of 1:40 p.m. ET on Oct. 2, and Alphabet was up 1.6% at $343.54.
