Anthropic Plans $90 Billion IPO Amid Nvidia Leadership Crisis

Anthropic PBC is scheduled to launch its initial public offering on November 19, seeking to raise as much as $90 billion with a proposed valuation of $1.4 trillion. The company expects to price its stock on Wednesday and begin trading on Thursday. As a public benefit corporation supervised by a Long-Term Benefit Trust, the maker of the Claude chatbot must balance shareholder returns with its safety mission.

The debut serves as a critical test for the AI sector following a leadership crisis at Nvidia Inc. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair with a woman U.S. officials believe to be a Chinese spy. The scandal triggered a more than 12% drop in Nvidia stock over the past week and created instability for Asian semiconductor suppliers like TSMC and SK Hynix.

Anthropic enters the public market with significant financial momentum, reporting annualized revenue of roughly $81 billion by October. Together with OpenAI, the firm generates $105 billion in combined annualized revenue, far outpacing China's top six AI companies, which earn approximately $11 billion. This lead is supported by massive infrastructure spending from partners such as Amazon, which reported a $578 billion AWS backlog and $77.26 billion in recent quarterly capital expenditures.