Investors flock to Anthropic IPO but question durability of AI lead

The Anthropic roadshow is scheduled to run through next Wednesday, when the AI company is expected to price the $64 billion deal. Anthropic and its investment banks are meeting ‌prospective investors in New York, Boston and San Francisco to gauge demand for the offering, one of the people and a third person familiar with the matter said.

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The IPO drew about two times the orders for the shares available by the end of Tuesday, the first day of the roadshow, one of the people said. By the end of Thursday, the book was six times oversubscribed, one other person said. SpaceX’s IPO was two times oversubscribed by the end of its second day of roadshow, Reuters previously reported.

While ​that single-digit subscription rate would be considered modest for many highly anticipated IPOs, bankers and investors said demand is impressive for the Anthropic offering given the size of the IPO. They expect Anthropic's ​order book to grow substantially as the roadshow progresses, reflecting strong early demand, two of the people said.

Details of the IPO, including the demand for shares, could ⁠change, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Anthropic declined to comment.

TIME OF UNCERTAINTY IN AI

The questions ​underscore the challenge of valuing a company whose revenue is growing fast but whose long-term competitive position remains uncertain. Investors are trying to determine whether the AI industry will ultimately be dominated by one or two players or support several leading companies, and whether Anthropic can sustain premium pricing if rivals offer comparable models.

Meanwhile, investors are also weighing the limitations of the information Anthropic is providing during its IPO roadshow. One investor who attended a roadshow meeting said the company had not provided detailed answers ​to some of the questions raised. Anthropic declined to comment on the investor's remarks.

While companies are not always able to address every investor question during roadshows, some investors remain cautious about an offering at a high valuation ​amid a broader shakeout in the AI sector, with the limited disclosure leaving some questions unanswered.

Morgan Stanley declined to comment. Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

REVENUE AT CENTER OF VALUATION DEBATE

Investors are arriving at widely different estimates of how quickly Anthropic's revenue will grow, creating a broad range of potential valuation outcomes.

The key figure underpinning valuation models is Anthropic's projected 2028 revenue, which banks estimate at around $270 billion to $280 billion and use to apply enterprise-value-to-revenue multiples and arrive at their valuation estimates, two of the people familiar with the projections said. For a high-growth ​company like Anthropic, investors typically give significant weight to ​future revenue growth when assessing its value.

Some sell-side ⁠projections put Anthropic's revenue at around $52 billion to $53 billion in 2026, rising to $135 billion to $137 billion in 2027, one of the people said.

Certain buy-side projections are running 10% to 15% higher for 2026 and 2027, an investor who has placed an order in the IPO said.

But buy-side forecasts also vary significantly. One investor who conducted due diligence ​on the IPO but decided not to participate has a more conservative outlook that is about 30% below the sell-side estimate for 2028.

Differences between sell-side and ​buy-side forecasts are common. Sell-side analysts' ⁠estimates tend to track a company's own projections more closely, while investors may build in more optimistic or conservative assumptions about future growth. Companies, in turn, have an incentive to set conservative targets ahead of an IPO, leaving room to beat estimates and raise expectations after listing.

The focus on Anthropic's projected 2028 revenue contrasts with SpaceX, whose valuation case relied on projected 2029 revenue that ​some investors viewed as particularly aggressive. Anthropic's valuation debate, by comparison, is anchored in a forecast for a year closer to its expected public listing.

Reporting by Milana Vinn and Echo Wang in New York and Krystal Hu in San Francisco, Editing by Colin Barr and Matthew Lewis

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Milana Vinn reports on technology, media, and telecom (TMT) mergers and acquisitions. Her content usually appears in the markets and deals sections of the website. Milana previously worked at GLG and PE Hub, where she spent several years covering TMT deals in private equity. She graduated from CUNY Graduate School of Journalism with Masters in Business Journalism.

Echo Wang runs coverage of corporate dealmaking across the U.S. for Reuters, leading a team that breaks market-moving news on the biggest deals in corporate America. Her own reporting spans M&A, IPOs and enterprise investigations, and was the first to report exclusives on some of the largest initial public offerings on record, including 2026's SpaceX and Anthropic, as well as major transactions such as SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI. She has also led Reuters’s coverage of deals involving TikTok and Grindr, and investigations into the financing behind Truth Social. Echo began her career as a travel writer for Lonely Planet and has worked on NPR’s The Indicator podcast, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Le Monde. She joined Reuters in 2019 as an Overseas Press Club Foundation Fellow after completing her master's degree at Columbia Journalism School.

Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.