Anthropic faces the stock market test: how many shares will the market have to absorb?

The most interesting question about Anthropic’s IPO is not how much the company will raise. It is how many shares the market will have to absorb when trading begins. The basic public offering envisages 825 million shares at an indicative price between 70 and 78 dollars. At 74 dollars, the midpoint of the range, the value is about 61 billion dollars. But up to 316 million shares already held by employees and existing shareholders could become saleable from the first session. The European prospectus gives 19 November 2026 as the expected date for the debut on Nasdaq, under the ticker ANT. Final price and timetable remain subject to the final terms of the transaction.

This is where Laurent Chaudeurge’s analysis begins, a member of the investment committee at BDL Capital Management, sent to Patrimoni e Finanza. His view is that Anthropic has taken the SpaceX lesson and pushed it further: demand can be supported by categories of investors who buy for reasons other than the company’s valuation, while the number of shares offered in the placement tells only part of the potential availability of securities at the debut. These are two distinct aspects. The first concerns how the price is formed; the second, how that price holds up once trading starts.

The SpaceX precedent: a good debut and the test of the following weeks

In a traditional IPO, intermediaries collect orders from professional investors and observe how many shares they are willing to buy at different price levels. This process, called bookbuilding, is used to understand how much the market is willing to pay and how demand changes if the price rises. In Chaudeurge’s reconstruction, SpaceX gave more room to retail investors, reserving them 20% of the public offering, and benefited from the accelerated entry procedure into the Nasdaq-100. Nasdaq confirmed SpaceX’s inclusion from 7 July 2026. For the index funds that replicate that index, the arrival of a new stock requires a portfolio adjustment to the assigned weight, even if the manager has not formed its own view of the company.

According to the data reported by Chaudeurge, SpaceX gained about 40% in the first week, then fell below the placement price shortly after entering the index and went on to lose almost half of its value relative to the peak. This is the step that gives the comparison meaning: an initial rise shows how much buyers are willing to pay in those first sessions, when the available supply may be limited and attention very high. It says less about which price those same investors will accept once the debut-related buying has run its course. For Anthropic, any accelerated entry into the Nasdaq-100 must still be distinguished from the Nasdaq listing: the former depends on the rules and decisions of the index.

The private placement: why suppliers invest in the customer

The first new element compared with the SpaceX precedent is the private placement of 26 billion dollars planned alongside the public offering, subject to its completion and other conditions. The seven partners named in the prospectus are Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC Partners. In Chaudeurge’s note, Google and Nvidia each commit 10 billion dollars. The point is the structure of the commitment: the amount is fixed in dollars and the final price determines how many shares are bought. Those 26 billion dollars finance Anthropic through a separate operation and must not be added to the shares that the public market may have to absorb on the first session.

For Chaudeurge, these partners have a different incentive from that of someone buying the stock solely for the expected return: they are also suppliers of chips, cloud or other infrastructure. Supporting Anthropic’s growth means supporting the demand for computing capacity on which their own revenues also depend. The author estimates at about 900 billion dollars the computing capacity commitments signed by Anthropic and uses that figure to give an order of magnitude: the 26 billion dollars would represent about 3% of them. The comparison sets side by side two different magnitudes, an equity investment and commercial commitments over several years. It does, however, help to understand why a supplier may judge the transaction worthwhile using criteria different from those of a stock investor.

From 61 to 84.4 billion: what can really reach the market

The second new element is the breadth of the exceptions to the lock-up, the restriction that normally prevents certain shareholders from selling for a period after the IPO. The 97% figure mentioned in the note refers to the newly issued shares included in the 825 million of the basic public offering: the related gross proceeds go to the company. That figure does not include the existing securities that could become tradeable from the debut. At the indicative price of 74 dollars, the sums read as follows.

About 60 billion dollars is the value of the basic public offering; about 85 billion is the theoretical scenario that includes all the additional shares potentially saleable at the debut. The 316 million shares represent about 38% more than the securities in the basic public offering. If all were sold at 74 dollars, existing shareholders would collectively receive about 25.1 billion, including the 1.75 billion already envisaged in the public offering. But being able to sell does not mean having decided to do so, and the trading price may differ from that of the IPO. The calculation also excludes the separate option granted to the placing banks to buy up to 123.75 million additional newly issued shares.

Growth on a scale of its own, a valuation still to be proven

The prospectus shows why the transaction is drawing so much attention. In the third quarter of 2026 Anthropic recorded revenues of 17 billion dollars, compared with 1.4 billion in the same quarter of 2025. Over the same period the operating loss fell from around 3.1 billion to 567 million dollars. The company also reports a positive adjusted operating result of 2.5 billion: this is a different measure from the accounting result, and the gap between the two figures is important for anyone assessing the stock. Revenue growth and the operational improvement are clear; to estimate the company’s value, one must understand how much cash will remain after bearing the costs of computing capacity and the investments needed to serve future demand.

This is where, in Chaudeurge’s reading, three categories of buyers with different motivations meet: retail investors, who may attach a great deal of weight to the story of growth; index funds, which adjust the portfolio when the composition of the index changes; and industrial partners, for whom the investment also has commercial value. None of these motivations in itself makes the price wrong. The author’s argument is more precise: the more demand depends on reasons that do not change as the price varies, the less the success of the placement helps establish whether the valuation is sustainable. The first session will show how much the market actually absorbed; the results of the following quarters will show whether the company can turn growth into profitability.

When indices become part of the operation

Chaudeurge’s conclusion concerns passive management. Created to allow investors to replicate the market at low cost, it now moves enough capital to make it attractive for an issuer to enter an index quickly. For those holding a fund that replicates it, an early entry can translate into exposure to a stock before the market has had much time to assess it. The author extends the criticism to the technological concentration of the major indices, also citing the S&P 500 and MSCI World. This is a separate argument from the specific case of the Nasdaq-100: the three indices have their own rules and Nasdaq’s accelerated procedure does not automatically apply to the others.

The test for Anthropic will therefore be twofold. At the debut it will be seen how many additional shares really reach the market and at what price they find buyers. In the following quarters it will become clear how far revenue growth can turn into cash and profitability after infrastructure costs. An IPO can be a success for those raising capital and, at the same time, leave open the question that matters to those buying: how much of future success is already built into today’s price?

Source of the analysis: Laurent Chaudeurge, member of the investment committee at BDL Capital Management, “Anthropic: the pupil surpasses master SpaceX”, contribution sent to the editorial team. SEC preliminary prospectus · European prospectus · Nasdaq announcement on SpaceX