Anthropic’s plans for a record initial public offering are under fresh scrutiny after Nvidia’s CEO was unexpectedly ousted.
The two companies are closely linked through large chip and investment deals, according to Bloomberg.
Nvidia has agreed to buy about $10 billion worth of shares in Anthropic as part of a $26 billion private placement that would run alongside the IPO. Anthropic’s filings show the Claude maker counts Nvidia as a strategic partner and has committed tens of billions of dollars to secure access to its most advanced chips.
Investors are watching whether the sudden departure of Jensen Huang, following reports of two extramarital affairs, one involving a woman U.S. intelligence official suspected of working for Chinese intelligence, will affect sentiment around AI stocks. This could complicate Anthropic’s plan to go public next week. The company is aiming to raise as much as $90.4 billion.
“A leadership transition could prompt Nvidia’s board to reassess the size, timing or strategic rationale of the commitment to Anthropic,” Mandeep Singh, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note Wednesday. “Any delay or reduction could weaken an important signal of support for Anthropic’s IPO pricing at around $1.4 trillion, though commitments from Google and other strategic investors might limit the financing impact.”
Anthropic mainly uses chips from Nvidia, AMD, Google and Amazon. Amazon and Google are already investors in the company. AMD and Google have also agreed to take part in the private placement, buying roughly $2.5 billion and $10 billion worth of shares respectively.
An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company is targeting a fully diluted valuation of about $1.4 trillion. People familiar with the matter have said the IPO has drawn multiple times the orders for the shares available.
“For now, it looks like the deal will go through,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak & Co., said in a note to clients. The latest revelations about Nvidia and the drop in its stock do not appear to be having an outsized effect on Anthropic so far, he said.
That could change, Maley added, but marketing of the deal has gone well. “If the shares of Anthropic can trade well in the days and weeks following the IPO, investors just might be able to push past the Nvidia scandal,” he said.
Anthropic’s filing on Tuesday reinforced the case for continued AI spending. The company reported a revenue run rate of $81 billion as of October 31, up $10 billion from the end of September. It had reported a $65 billion run rate at the end of July.
Anthropic calculates the figure by annualizing consumption-based fees over a trailing 28-day period and subscription-based fees for a single month.
“The S-1 showed Anthropic has appropriately hedged their AI accelerator sourcing and have positioned themselves not to be too reliant on Nvidia,” said Luke Lango, chief technology analyst at InvestorPlace.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the IPO, with 20 other banks participating. The stock is expected to begin trading on November 19 on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT.
