Bitcoin has declined nearly 17% from its September 21 peak above $87,000, trading at $72,891 at press time, down 2.7% in 24 hours. According to reports from BeInCrypto, this drop has brought Bitcoin below $73,000 for the first time since August 20, occurring approximately one week before Anthropic is expected to begin trading on Nasdaq. The decline follows a similar pattern seen before SpaceX's record listing in June, when Bitcoin lost nearly 29% between its May high and June low.
Anthropic has revised its IPO draft terms, cutting the proposed maximum share price from $80 to $78 and reducing the potential offering from $69.3 billion to approximately $64.4 billion. The update surfaced Tuesday, November 10, after the company withdrew an earlier pricing version it described as inaccurate. The revised draft retains its $70 floor while the reported share count dropped from about 867 million to 825 million shares. At the revised maximum price of $78 per share, the offering would raise roughly $64.4 billion, representing a $4.9 billion reduction or approximately 7% decrease from the initial proposal. The company has not specified which details were wrong or explained why the maximum price changed, leaving investors facing an enormous proposed sale with unexplained corrections to IPO terms.
Seven major technology companies have committed to purchase a combined $26 billion of Anthropic stock through a private placement at the IPO price. The participating companies include Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft, and TSMC. Their participation ties several major technology companies to the offering, but it does not determine what other investors will pay. Each participating company would buy at the price set by the public offering, making the final IPO price consequential for the private placement as well. The listing was still expected on Thursday or Friday of the following week relative to the November 10 report, though that timing remains an expectation rather than a confirmed trading date.
Anthropic was established in 2021 by chief executive Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei, and several former OpenAI colleagues following disagreements with OpenAI's leadership over AI development direction. According to Livemint, Dario Amodei joined OpenAI in 2016 and led its safety team, while Daniela Amodei joined in 2018 and became vice president of safety and policy. The siblings and several colleagues left OpenAI in December 2020 and launched Anthropic approximately four weeks later. Their departure was followed by co-founders Jared Kaplan and Chris Olah, who were housemates of the Amodeis before their time at OpenAI. The company's remaining co-founders include Sam McCandlish as chief architect, Tom Brown overseeing computing infrastructure, and Jack Clark leading public benefit initiatives.
Anthropic's relationship with the US government has become a significant issue ahead of its proposed public listing. In January, the Pentagon sought unrestricted access to the company's Claude AI chatbot, but Anthropic opposed two proposed applications: domestic mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. The disagreement escalated in February when US President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth subsequently directed that the company be designated a supply-chain risk, a classification generally associated with foreign adversaries. The dispute highlighted the challenges facing AI companies as governments seek greater access to advanced artificial intelligence systems for national security and defence applications.
Investors had expected Anthropic to target a valuation of around $1.5 trillion a week ago, but after Thursday's sharp selloff in AI stocks, some major backers are pushing for a lower figure, according to The Wall Street Journal. The valuation may fall well short of the roughly $2 trillion floated months ago, though the Nasdaq's recent rebound likely bolsters Anthropic's IPO plans. Valuation expert Aswath Damodaran noted in a new blog post that the recent selloff indicates the market is becoming more discerning, stopping the broad practice of marking up or down all AI stocks uniformly. Damodaran segmented the AI ecosystem into four groups: suppliers (hardware/chips like Nvidia), builders (hyperscalers like Microsoft and Amazon), AI product firms (frontier models like OpenAI and Anthropic), and customers.
