FOURWEEKMBA EXPLAINER · FROM THE NEWSROOM · UPDATED 15 NOVEMBER 2026
The short answer: Anthropic’s IPO range of $70 to $78 a share values the company at about $916 billion to $1.02 trillion on the 13.09 billion shares its filing says will be outstanding, $968 billion at the $74 midpoint (our arithmetic). Per share, $74 is 13.2 times what Series E investors paid in early 2025 and 26% above the Series H price of May and June 2026, after converting the preferred prices at the filing’s 10-to-1 ratio. The buyers are the 825 million-share public offering, up to 20% of it for retail investors, plus seven chip and cloud suppliers that take $26.0 billion of non-voting stock at the IPO price. The filing summarises 18 risks. The biggest number behind them is $900.9 billion of spending commitments, mostly compute, against about $212.7 billion of cash after the deal.
Free to share with a link to this page. Preferred prices from the S-1/A divided by 10, the conversion ratio the filing gives for Series E to H; our arithmetic. The IPO range is not final.
This page is the map of the deal’s numbers: what the price range is worth, who buys and what the filing says can go wrong. For the steps, the dates and the lock-up calendar, see how the Anthropic IPO works. Everything here is from Anthropic’s amended S-1 of 10 November 2026 (Amendment No. 2), its offering materials filed with the SEC, and its own funding announcements. When we checked EDGAR at 10:54 UTC on 15 November there was no later amendment and no final prospectus.
The filing says: “It is currently estimated that the initial public offering price per share will be between $70.00 and $78.00.” It uses the $74.00 midpoint for every illustrative figure.
At $70
$916.1B
Base deal of 825 million shares: $57.75 billion.
At $74 (midpoint)
$968.4B
Base deal: $61.05 billion. Net proceeds to Anthropic from the offering and the placement: “approximately $84.6 billion”.
At $78
$1.02T
Base deal: $64.35 billion. Each $1.00 on the price moves Anthropic’s net proceeds by about $793 million, the filing says.
Values are the price times the 13,086,672,593 shares of all classes the filing says will be outstanding after the offering and the placement; base deal values are 825,000,000 times the price. Our arithmetic.
How the price got here: four private rounds
Anthropic sold preferred stock in four rounds in the 18 months before the filing. The S-1/A lists each round’s price, and says each preferred share converts into 10 common shares (the ratio for every series except the older Series D). Divided by 10, the path per common share runs:
Series E · Jan to Mar 2025
$5.61
$56.0865 per preferred share. Anthropic announced “$3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion post-money valuation” on 3 March 2025.
Series F · Aug to Sep 2025
$14.10
$140.9676 per preferred share; about $13.0 billion from 202 investors. Announced at $183 billion post-money on 2 September 2025.
Series G · Jan to Feb 2026
$25.91
$259.1364 per preferred share; $30.2 billion gross in the round. Announced at $380 billion post-money on 12 February 2026.
Series H · May to Jun 2026
$58.90
$589.0095 per preferred share; $65.2 billion gross. Announced at $965 billion post-money on 28 May 2026.
On this basis the $74 midpoint is 26% above the Series H price, 19% above it at $70 and 32% at $78, by our arithmetic. One caution: the private-round headlines are post-money valuations in the company’s own announcements, while the $968 billion figure above uses the shares outstanding after the IPO. The two counts are not the same, so the per-share prices are the cleaner comparison.
Who buys
The public offering. 825,000,000 Class A shares: “We are selling 801,351,354 shares of Class A common stock and the selling stockholders identified in this prospectus are selling an additional 23,648,646 shares”. The underwriters, led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have an option on up to 123,750,000 more. New investors will hold about 6.3% of the Class A and Class N stock, the filing says.
Retail. Anthropic “currently expect[s] allocations to retail investors, both in the United States and in other countries, to represent up to 20%” of the shares offered. Two slices are set out in filings: a Japanese public offering of US$3.0 billion to US$3.5 billion (amended Japanese registration statement, 11 November) and a European retail offering of up to 80,135,135 new shares (prospectus filed 12 November).
The suppliers. Separately, seven companies have agreed to buy “an aggregate of $26.0 billion” of Class N stock at the IPO price. Class N has no vote except where the law requires one. Anthropic pays no underwriting discount on these shares.
The S-1/A’s summary has 18 bullet points. Grouped by theme, five are about keeping up (model progress, competition, market demand, a short history, early-stage growth), three each are about safety, compute and control, two about people and culture, one about customers and one about regulation. The first bullet is unusual for a prospectus:
“Our models have in the past behaved, and may in the future behave, in unintended, misaligned, or autonomous ways, including by taking harmful actions that no user or third party directed”
The grouping is ours; the 18 bullets are the filing’s.
Compute bills
“Aggregate committed spend of approximately $900.9 billion, substantially all of which is related to compute and infrastructure”: about $451.6 billion before the end of 2030, about $70.7 billion due in the 12 months after 30 September 2026.
Losses
Net losses of $42.0 billion in 2025 and $104.0 billion in the first nine months of 2026. Most of that is fair-value changes on convertible notes: $34.3 billion and $94.3 billion. Operating income was $974 million in Q2 2026 and an operating loss of $567 million in Q3.
Control
The founders’ single Class F share carries 50.1% of the vote on general matters, and the Class A vote is capped at 49.9%. The capital structure “may effectively eliminate the ability of holders of our Class A common stock to influence important decisions, including a change in control.” Anthropic will be a Nasdaq “controlled company”.
Customers
No customer was over 10% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026, but the top five were “approximately 25%”. About 79% of Q3 revenue came from outside the top five, up from about 64% in Q1.
Legal
A putative Sherman Act class action alleges Anthropic and other defendants agreed to slow the pace of AI model improvement; Anthropic says it disagrees and will defend it. A new warning: because registered and unregistered shares start trading together, buyers “may be unable to assert claims under Section 11 or Section 12(a)(2)”.
Growth from a small base
Revenue was $4,585 million in 2025 and $33,242 million in the first nine months of 2026, $16,956 million of it in Q3. Run-rate revenue was about $81 billion on 31 October. The filing warns historical growth rates “are not indicative of future performance”.
Pro forma cash ($212,684 million) and net proceeds are at the $74 midpoint. Cash covers the next 12 months of commitments 3.0 times; net proceeds equal 18.7% of the commitments due before 2031. Our arithmetic.
How to read the map
Price against the last round. The final price in the 424B4 prospectus against $58.90, the Series H price per common share.
Price against the range. Inside $70 to $78, or outside it after new terms are filed.
Value on the right share count. Price times 13.09 billion shares outstanding, not the private-round post-money figures.
Commitments against cash. $70.7 billion due in a year against about $212.7 billion of cash after the deal.
Who holds the vote. Public buyers get Class A shares with a capped vote; the founders and the Long-Term Benefit Trust keep control.
What is not established
The final price, the final share count and the date of the prospectus are not set; the filing calls the range an estimate. Demand figures, valuation targets and analyst forecasts reported in the press are not in the filings and are left out here. Our newsroom tracks them on the IPO hub. This page explains the filing; it is not investment advice and makes no forecast about the price.
FAQ
What is Anthropic’s IPO valuation?
At the filed range of $70 to $78 a share, about $916 billion to $1.02 trillion on the 13,086,672,593 shares the S-1/A says will be outstanding after the offering and placement, $968 billion at the $74 midpoint (our arithmetic). The final value depends on the price set at pricing.
How does the IPO price compare with Anthropic’s last private round?
Series H preferred stock sold at $589.0095 a share in May and June 2026, or $58.90 per common share at the filing’s 10-to-1 conversion ratio. The $74 midpoint is 26% higher. Anthropic announced the Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation.
Who is buying Anthropic’s IPO?
Public investors buy 825 million Class A shares, up to 20% of them retail by Anthropic’s estimate. Separately, Google, NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC buy $26.0 billion of non-voting Class N stock at the IPO price.
What are the main risks in Anthropic’s S-1?
The summary lists 18, including misaligned or autonomous model behaviour, securing enough compute, intense competition, customer concentration and a share structure that concentrates the vote with the founders and the Long-Term Benefit Trust. The filing also discloses about $900.9 billion of spending commitments.
Is Anthropic profitable?
Not on a net basis: it lost $104.0 billion in the first nine months of 2026, $94.3 billion of it from fair-value changes on convertible notes and similar instruments. It reported operating income of $974 million in Q2 2026 and an operating loss of $567 million in Q3.
Sources: Anthropic, PBC, Form S-1/A Amendment No. 2, 10 November 2026 (cover, Summary, Risk Factors, Use of Proceeds, Dilution, Underwriting, Part II Item 15, notes to the financialstatements); free writing prospectuses of 11-12 November 2026 (Japan amendment, European retail prospectus); SEC EDGAR filing list, checked 10:54 UTC 15 November 2026; Anthropic funding announcements of 3 March 2025, 2 September 2025, 12 February 2026 and 28 May 2026. Quotes are verbatim from those documents. Per-share conversions, valuations at the range, ratios and the grouping of risks are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
