Top
Best
New

Posted by josephljohnston 1 hour ago

Anthropic IPO(ipo.anthropic.com)
128 points | 134 comments
freakynit 15 seconds ago|
A few important points from the linked documents:

1. Price range: $70–78 with midpoint at around $74.00

2. Gross deal size: $85.3B (IPO + $26B private placement)

3. Implied market cap: ~$968B (at $74, 13.09B shares)

4. Q3'26 revenue: $17.0B (+1,127% YoY)

5. Run-rate revenue: ~$81B (as of Oct 2026)

6. Compute commitments: $900.9B (through 2045)

7. Ticker: ANT (Nasdaq)

8. Customers with ≥$100K, ≥$1M and ≥$10M TTM revenue: 11,900+, 1,900+ and ~250.

9. Customers under $100K: ~40 million

10. Fortune 500 penetration: over 50%

11. Global 2000 penetration: over 30%

brainless 49 minutes ago||
There is a lot of value from LLMs but it is something that I can switch easily. Yes, some frontier models are much better but users can still chose to use cheaper models for most of the work. In fact most applications, through which people will interact with LLMs anyway, will not need frontier models unless they offer "chat with AI". Anything that solves specific problems (even multiple problems) does not need frontier LLMs.

Anthropic and OpenAI will have to become more of the end user application stack. Files, calendars, emails, photos, and much more have to pass through them for them to keep making money. Else they cannot make money like the way they have been in this early era of LLMs.

diegof79 4 minutes ago||
Yes, they know that. That’s why Claude is becoming a platform like Google Workspace.

They need to leverage Claude Code in the software industry to position themselves as the go-to platform for businesses.

Meanwhile, Google and Microsoft, which already dominate that area, seem to be dormant.

hello5010 1 minute ago||
[dead]
mxschumacher 45 minutes ago|||
a big move into end-user software would mean that they have to compete heavily with their own largest customers. The economics of offering SaaS are also under meaningful pressure and don't warrant anywhere near the valuation that is being suggested
abirch 37 minutes ago|||
End-user software is going to be under a lot of pressure. If you're Microsoft, Apple, or Google: you can easily copy products or integrate ideas into their platform. I see companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and Oracle having to downsize significantly to stay profitable. Having said that, my in-laws still pay for an AOL email so I don't think their cashflow is going to zero soon.
mxschumacher 26 minutes ago||
Adobe seems to be in a tough spot, because so much of the lock-in is client side, I think Salesforce is fairly well protected, it's just so impossibly difficult to remove once a company has fully adopted it. Similar to the staying power of the ERPs of Oracle and SAP.
numlock86 15 minutes ago||
It's the same really. There have always been alternatives that can work with Adobe's various file formats. Even more aren't going to change much, at least for their enterprise key customers. This is not only the case for Adobe, but many others as well, e.g. MS office is still a thing these days, and so are things like 3Ds Max or Maya, albeit having many compatible cheaper or even free alternatives. It's not so much about features, pricing or even stability. It's about customer support. Do I want to ask an LLM and test my luck or write a GitHub issue and cross my fingers that someone will read it within the next weeks? No, I will pick up my phone or write a mail and get a response within hours if not minutes.
grahamlee 22 minutes ago|||
now imagine that said customer/competitors have been uploading/generating their source code, problem reports, marketing collateral, and other IP _to the LLM company_ for the last few years.
elorant 28 minutes ago|||
Easily in the context of the corporate world is to pay for something, that something gets installed and then just works, and if it doesn’t work there’s always someone you can call 24/7 to come and fix it. I don’t see how this is possible with open models.
gambiting 18 seconds ago|||
What do you mean? We use Bedrock at our company and I can switch to literally any model, including the open ones, by just typing /model and picking it, even including inside Claude Code. It's ridiculously easy to switch, and imho GLM 5.3 is good enough for 99% of my daily tasks already.
mxschumacher 23 minutes ago||||
the answer is to use a gateway that all the prompts go through. There are many proprietary and open source solutions for this. You get the benefit of making it trivial to switch between proprietary providers in case you are unhappy with the performance or squeezed on price. The AI Gateways put cap on LLM providers' margin upside.

Additionally, the gateway allows for caching, additional security checks, centralized monitoring. I think most corporations have a multi-provider setup anyway.

dgellow 24 minutes ago||||
You pay a service provider, who manages the open models… there is absolutely nothing special about it. The hardware can be something you own. Or you rent. Or you just pay the service provider to access the open model apis. Lots of options here, it’s not different from pretty much any other software service in the corporate world
jansan 26 minutes ago||||
Isn't that exactly how Linux companies are making money?
steve1977 18 minutes ago|||
Good luck in calling Anthropic support...
kshri24 40 minutes ago|||
True. We will end up getting more Google alternatives. Nothing beyond that for now at least.
fooqux 45 minutes ago|||
It feels like people are still trying to bet on the horse that will achieve gAI.
mark_undoio 32 minutes ago|||
I'm fascinated by exactly how an investment in the company that first reaches AGI (or whatever we decide to call it) might pay off... It feels like the stocks would absolutely be worth owning in the immediate term because they'd be hot property at the point where people realise it's happening.

The thing that I'm less clear on is, if and when they achieve some kind of recursive improvement exponential growth thingy, isn't that going to heavily disrupt the entire economy / stock market? In that environment, would Anthropic's stocks really be a good bet, given they have to operate within the economy?

piva00 15 minutes ago||
> The thing that I'm less clear on is, if and when they achieve some kind of recursive improvement exponential growth thingy, isn't that going to heavily disrupt the entire economy / stock market? In that environment, would Anthropic's stocks really be a good bet, given they have to operate within the economy?

That's a long-term problem to be dealt with later, greed dictates to pursue the former as long as the music is playing and everyone is dancing. Similar to 2007-2008 when it was clear that things were breaking but the incentives were to play the game for as long as possible before it imploded.

mark_undoio 12 minutes ago||
It's clearer to me why this works for generic investors than for the AI companies themselves - unless their plan is just for key employees to cash out and live on a private moon just before Consequences arrive.
locknitpicker 7 minutes ago|||
> It feels like people are still trying to bet on the horse that will achieve gAI.

I think that at this point gAI is just a marketing blurb, and the actual race is to dominate current practical applications involving basic RAG and ReAct loops. This can go from anything between software development, business intelligence, and market research. A company whose top brass can use a team of agents to do what nowadays they assign to mid- and top-level management is an executive with tighter control over the whole business process. For this you don't need gAI.

arbll 40 minutes ago|||
This is the same argument we have heard many times with SaaS that would presumably get replaced by open source equivalents. In practice it does not happen because there is a lot of value in having someone else deal with a problem.
whilenot-dev 13 minutes ago||
That "someone else" is just shifting from a single open source maintainer to an LLM.
ModernMech 2 minutes ago||
Not only can you switch easily, they all seem to do the same thing, fail in the same ways, make the same bad linguistic choices, write the same code... I think at the end of the day, LLMs are a commodity. They're like a grease, or oil. They're trying all the tricks with branding cute names, version numbers, benchmarks, thinking levels, but it all just seems the same stuff to me: I put in tokens, I get more tokens back, and if I didn't know ahead I wouldn't be able to distinguish if they'd come from Anthropic or OpenAI or wherever. Maybe some people can but I can't.
joennlae 51 minutes ago||
„The IPO process begins with a roadshow starting on November 10th (EST). Subject to regulatory clearance, the final IPO share price is expected to be set on November 18th (EST), and shares are expected to begin publicly trading on November 19th (EST).“
zhivota 40 minutes ago|
So if share price is only set one day before trading, I guess you just have that day to decide to buy if you can get allocation from your broker? I'd like to try it but I've never bought an IPO before.
kshacker 32 minutes ago|||
I have tried a couple of IPOs

You indicate your interest. Also start funding the account. So you fund 7000 for 100 shares at 70. Then they announce the price is 75. You must change the order to fit the funds or have extra money. Of course you can opt out or change the quantity anyways. But I think in both the cases I actually went ahead (Reddit and figma), I had to reconfirm the quantity. You can't be away from the network.

taude 35 minutes ago||||
You commit to your broker before, if you're big enough of a player. They'll mostly have allocated to their biggest clients and such.

Pretty hard to get in on a hot IPO, though, as the shares will go to their favorite clients (those with the most money).

kshacker 29 minutes ago||
I got lucky in the Reddit ipo. I had decent karma so I got invited for their special insider track. But I had to create a new account via a link shared by Reddit. Got what I asked for.

But otherwise yes it goes as described above.

origini 29 minutes ago||||
I just 'bought' some through ing-diba, you can set a limit.
lofaszvanitt 37 minutes ago|||
You don't need a broker. Use Saxobank or similar.
kgwgk 35 minutes ago||
"You don't need a broker. Use some other broker."
ftchd 24 minutes ago||
It's a "neobroker", get on with the times!
TrackerFF 17 minutes ago||
The way I see it, AI is more comparable to some sort of utility. Like electricity, internet, etc. - and should be priced that way. If we ever get to "true" AGI, and the open source models also get there, what's the moat? Access to compute could be the differentiator.
fblp 38 minutes ago||
The economics of this are absurd, and Anthropic hasn't been without their controversy; but I use Claude everyday, and they've made tremendous impact on society. I wish them the best for their IPO.
small_model 53 minutes ago||
I would wait for 2-3 quarters before investing, it will drop and there will likely be lock-ins to contend with. if growth slows then price could tumble fast.
xnx 49 minutes ago|
So I should short it?
jstanley 47 minutes ago|||
To profit from shorting it you need to not just be right that it is going to go down, but be able to tolerate the volatility in the interim.
rob74 23 minutes ago|||
"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent". That, or the markets may turn out to be right after all...
jstanley 10 minutes ago||
I always liked "you can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".
alembic_fumes 22 minutes ago|||
So I should straddle it?

edit: To clarify, this is a light-hearted continuation about how essentially any claim about the stock market is enactable in some form. And so even the much of generally well-intentioned advise is in fact a claim that the person should be putting their money on, if they truly believe it. I think only claims like "Nobody knows what's going to happen, it's effectively gambling => stay out of the market" come close to being fully self-consistent, but e.g. advising to not buy because the price comes down, or to not short because of volatility both fail this. Markets are funny.

jstanley 13 minutes ago||
I didn't claim that it was going to go down though.

My only claim was that to profit from shorting it you need to not just be right that it is going to go down, but be able to tolerate the volatility in the interim.

That's a claim about the stock market, how do you enact it?

Note it is not a claim that volatility is definitely going to be high.

dozerly 39 minutes ago||||
If you have to ask, then you shouldn’t short it.
xnx 30 minutes ago||
Right. I was trying to emphasize that no one knows what the stock price will do.
ftchd 23 minutes ago||
That's why there's a stock market
DharmaPolice 38 minutes ago||||
If you view that as an investment then no. If you view it as a minor flutter then maybe. You might believe that Team X will win the next game (maybe at a 60% chance) but unless you're a degenerate gambler you wouldn't bet heavily on that outcome.
epolanski 40 minutes ago|||
As the late Charlie Munger said about Tesla: I wouldn't own it, I wouldn't short it.
yu3zhou4 52 minutes ago||
Apparently not every country can participate in this IPO. As of now, if you open the Revolut Anthropic IPO page from Poland, you get:

> Linked page(s) related to Anthropic IPO can only be viewed by persons located in UK, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.

jstanley 48 minutes ago||
The UK page is effectively empty and just links to https://app.retailbook.com/offers/anthropic-ipo
xnorswap 34 minutes ago||
And you then have to agree to not share anything in it with anyone outside the UK, including:

> I will not transmit or otherwise send any of the information to which this gateway gives access to any person outside the United Kingdom.

It's extremely hard with modern browsers to ensure that doesn't happen!

dotancohen 47 minutes ago||
Poles apart.
EcommerceFlow 25 minutes ago||
Got into the gpt3 beta June 2021 and haven’t looked back, yet it’s incredibly sad we had no avenue to invest in these companies until now.

Why doesn’t a private company stock market exist?

vincnetas 21 minutes ago||
It exist, but not for poor peaople.
muvlon 8 minutes ago|||
There have been billions and billions invested into Anthropic. It's very evidently possible. Just not for the general public.
kingstnap 10 minutes ago|||
> Why doesn't a private company stock market exist?

There is something almost ironic about you saying this on a site ran by Y combinator.

TrackerFF 12 minutes ago|||
Because we - the plebs - are here to provide liquidity for the risk-takers. Hence whey they have to IPO.

But for what it is worth, for every successful AI company like Anthropic, OpenAI, etc. - there are probably tenfold more that are valued in the low billions, and will be the first ones to wash away / become worthless if/when the bubble pops.

And lastly, private sales do exist.

hunta2097 3 minutes ago||
Increasingly these days, it seems if a VC backed company was profitable it would never IPO.

Why would they want to share profits?

In these companies, the shares *are* the product. Just like on social media *you* are the product, not the content.

arionmiles 13 minutes ago||
It's called the Secondary Market
simianwords 4 minutes ago||
Around a few months back, it was very popular to argue that inference was subsidised and that Anthropic is losing a lot of money. Loads of commenters in HN were convinced that this was the case. I've personally lost count of the arguments I've gotten into on this topic.

This filing clearly shows that the training+inference margins are at around 43%.

I also had a bet with some one on this topic and this news pretty much settles it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473051

I wonder if people will now stop claiming that inference is subsidised? There has to be epistemic hygiene

Proof:

- Revenue (Jan–Sep 2026): $33.242 billion.

- Total compute and infrastructure costs (training + inference): $18.808 billion.

- Revenue after all compute costs: $14.434 billion.

- Margin: ($33.242B − $18.808B) / $33.242B = 43.4%.

- Source: Anthropic's SEC S-1 filing, November 10, 2026, “Operating Expenses — Compute and Infrastructure.”

thibsrn 44 minutes ago|
There is a heavy amount of circular investments in the industry, among competitors. There is a private placement that is made in parallel with the public offering, through $26B of a special stock, according to the S1. They all have a lot to gain from a successful Anthropic public issue. The problem is it blurs the signal, we don't how much is overvaluation that contributes to a bubble.

I don't think there has often been such an intertwined industry before. Usually cartels are made through discreet partnerships at the operational level, this is an interconnection in the background at the financial one.

mxschumacher 21 minutes ago|
yep, for a comprehensive writeup and analysis of the circular finance topic, have a look at https://hntrbrk.com/investigations/nvidia
More comments...