AI giant Anthropic sees $500 billion evaporate before IPO

The planned IPO of Anthropic gets a big reality check. Where a valuation of 2 trillion dollars was previously discussed, some current and potential investors are now discussing an amount around 1.5 trillion dollars.

That means a difference of about $500 billion before the AI company actually goes public.

Anthropic posted revenue of $16.8 billion in the third quarter, up about 45 percent from a quarter earlier. Normally that would be impressive.

But in the second quarter, sales more than doubled. Investors therefore clearly see the rate of growth slowing down. In addition, large customers such as Meta and Microsoft are increasingly using their own AI models.

Anthropic has also reduced the use of its models for so-called distillation. That previously accounted for about 5 to 7 percent of sales.

Competition is also getting tougher. Anthropic significantly reduced the price of Claude Haiku 5.5 compared to its predecessor this month. Cheaper Chinese AI models meanwhile put extra pressure on the market.

This makes the great demand around Anthropic increasingly urgent. How much revenue growth will remain if prices continue to fall?

The appreciation of Anthropic is also important for many more companies. Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle indirectly earn a lot of money from the enormous demand for computing power from Anthropic and OpenAI.

A lower valuation for Anthropic can therefore also put pressure on valuations elsewhere in the AI chain. This happens at a sensitive time.

The largest AI and chip stocks together lost more than $1 trillion in market value this week, while CoreWeave and Dell, among others, fell sharply. Anthropic is expected to go public in November. OpenAI could then follow.

This may make Anthropic's IPO the most important valuation test to date for the entire AI investment cycle.