By Milana Vinn, Echo Wang and Krystal Hu
Nov 13 (Reuters) - Institutional-investor interest in Anthropic’s initial public offering is outpacing the early days of SpaceX's roadshow, according to two people familiar with the companies’ offerings.
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.
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.
During the roadshow, investors are grappling with two fundamental questions as they assess the offering and the company's valuation: whether Anthropic can maintain its lead as competitors such as Alphabet’s Google rapidly catch up in developing advanced AI models, and whether its Claude chatbot can maintain its lead beyond coding, in the broader market for knowledge workers.
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.
One of the group meetings during the roadshow also did not include a conference call allowing institutional investors to dial in and ask questions, according to an investor who attended that meeting — a departure from standard roadshow practice. Representatives from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley largely read from prepared remarks rather than solicit questions at that meeting, the person added.
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 comparable companies used in the valuation models also reflect the difficulty of finding direct peers for Anthropic. SpaceX and cybersecurity company CrowdStrike are among the names being used as benchmarks, one of the people familiar with the projections said.
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)