All about Anthropic
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🟠All about Anthropic. Today’s newsletter looks at the Claude maker’s IPO from every angle, dissecting its expected valuation, what the S-1 tells us about other AI labs, and why the company is listing in the first place. Read our full breakdown of Anthropic’s S-1 here.
Plus: Universal Music Group talks with PE firms, Apollo and SpaceX’s new chip deal and more ⬇️
Anthropic’s long-awaited IPO filing offers the public’s first glimpse into the financials of a leading US frontier lab. The S-1 shows a company with rocketing revenue that’s trying to outrun the hundreds of billions of dollars it has committed to computing contracts.
Revenue hit $11.56 billion in Q2, up from $787 million during the same time last year. While the filing leaves Q3 blank, the company claims revenue was 86 times the $197 million Anthropic netted in Q4 2024.
That would put Q3 revenue around $16.9 billion, a much slower rate of growth.
On paper, Anthropic’s losses are immense. In Q2, the company lost $66.3 billion, though most of its losses can be attributed to accounting rules. The company owes money in the form of convertible notes that increase in value as the company’s valuation rises.
Much of the company’s money is going to fund the compute that its AI is trained and run on. The company spent $5.6 billion on compute contracts, up from $1.39 billion in spending a year earlier.
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Anthropic filed Monday for its long-discussed initial public offering, promising to finally convert scores of paper fortunes into real ones.
Investors have discussed a valuation of about $1.5 trillion, down from earlier expectations of $2 trillion, after the company’s quarterly revenue growth slowed, according to a Reuters report earlier this month.
The lower number is still a 55% hike from its $965 billion private valuation in May. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, one share of common stock would be worth about $88.60.
Despite not revealing the price range, the more than 300-page prospectus offers a closer look at who invested, what they paid and how much longer they may have to wait to cash out.
Who is selling?
Anthropic’s seven co-founders, including CEO Dario Amodei and President Daniela Amodei, are among the prospective selling stockholders. They will maintain control through a single special share that carries 50.1% of voting power.
The two biggest backers of the company are strategic investors Amazon and Alphabet’s Google. Amazon will use the IPO to convert outstanding debt into equity.
Amazon had $6.2 billion in outstanding convertible notes as of June 30. An IPO would let Anthropic convert some of those notes into shares at prices as low as $2.09 apiece, with a 12% ownership cap, according to the prospectus.
If fully converted, Amazon would own roughly one-fifth of Anthropic’s outstanding shares, according to PitchBook calculations.
Lenders in the broadly syndicated loan market are being paid less for risk on LBO loans than at any point since 2007.
Spread per unit of leverage—a measure of how much extra yield a lender gets for each turn of leverage—is 73 bps in 2026, down from nearly 100 bps in 2023, according to data from PitchBook LCD.
Yet buyout borrowers now carry less debt, cover interest more comfortably, and have more sponsor equity beneath the loan. Deal flow is also more diversified by sector and tilted toward larger companies.
Leverage and interest costs have both declined, but spreads have compressed even more sharply as new-issue supply continues to lag investor demand.
Buyout financing rebounded in Q3 after the slump in Q2, but the market’s supply/demand imbalance persists. Net supply in the institutional leveraged loan market, measured by the net change in outstanding loans in the Morningstar LSTA US Leveraged Loan Index, totaled roughly $26 billion in the year to Sept. 30, down sharply from $91.5 billion at the same point in 2025.
With so little net new paper, LBO financings, which are fresh supply for loan investors, are in high demand, testing how tight spreads can go.
- Americans are asking AI what to vote for, and candidates are taking note. Reuters saw several documents showing campaign strategies that involved crafting messaging to appeal to chatbots. [Reuters]
- Would you pay a startup to help you make friends? In the ongoing loneliness epidemic, more people are using paid services for matchmaking—not with romantic partners, but friends. [The New York Times]
- Nathan Fielder had a brief stint as a broker before his filmmaking career, but it lasted less than a year. Now, the “You Can See Everything” co-director has a net worth of $5 million. [Fortune]
Autonomous construction vehicle startup Bedrock Robotics secured a $600 million Series C led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital at a $4.1 billion valuation.
Nevis, the developer of an AI wealth management platform, raised a $70 million Series B led by EQT Ventures.
Nous, a London-based developer of an AI agent to manage household administrative tasks and reduce spending, raised $17 million in a round led by Heartcore Capital.
Overwatch Data, the developer of a threat intelligence and risk operations platform, secured a $15 million Series A led by Mouro Capital.
Adsilico, a UK-based startup developing AI simulation technology for testing medical devices on virtual patients, raised a ÂŁ10 million Series A led by PXN Ventures.
India-based Matiks, the developer of a logic and puzzle gaming app, raised a $10 million pre-Series A led by General Catalyst.
Hong Kong-based Redotpay, a crypto transaction company backed by Blockchain Capital, is in talks to file for an IPO by the end of the year, Bloomberg reported.
CPP Investments is in talks to sell its minority stake in Nedgia, the largest gas distributor in Spain, which was originally bought for €900 million, Bloomberg reported.
NEA-backed biotech Corxel Pharmaceuticals, which specializes in obesity drugs, will go public via a merger with Amanat Acquisition Corp. in a SPAC deal.
Israel-based quantum computing startup Classiq Technologies, which is backed by Team8, agreed to be acquired by Intel.
NeuReality, an Israel-based chip startup backed by XT Venture Capital, agreed to be acquired by Unconventional AI.
Legal AI startup Clio acquired government and regulatory intelligence platform developer Page, which is backed by Twelve Below.
Veck, the developer of a platform for VC investors to find emerging startups to back, was acquired by Evertrace.
Apollo Global Management agreed to a $40 billion equipment-finance lease for AI chips for SpaceX.
Apollo Global Management agreed to acquire a stake in the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund’s PE unit, Mubadala Capital.
The IRR for PE vintages from 2018 to 2021 trails those from 2012 to 2017, with each vintage from that period performing successively worse. IRRs for subsequent years point to recovery but are subject to change due to immature cash flows.
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