10th Nov 2026, London: A month ago, Wall Street was talking about valuing Claude’s maker at $2 trillion when it lists on Nasdaq. Now buyers are talking about $1.2 to $1.3 trillion. Here is what changed.
What happened
September: Reports said Anthropic was aiming for an IPO value of about $2 trillion.
October: Big funds pushed back, asking for $1.5 to $1.6 trillion over slowing growth and heavy spending.
29 October: Google’s parent Alphabet lost nearly $500 billion in market value in one day after its search growth disappointed. It was one of the biggest one-day losses in stock market history.
6 November: After a wider sell-off in AI stocks, Bloomberg and Moneycontrol reported buyers discussing $1.2 to $1.3 trillion, with some floating $1.1 trillion.
To be clear, Anthropic itself has not cut anything. It has not yet published a price range. These figures are what potential buyers say they would pay.
Why Google’s fall matters
Google is not just a rival. It is an Anthropic investor, its landlord for at least $121 billion of computing, and a seller of Claude through its cloud. When investors punish Google for spending big on AI without enough payback, they ask Anthropic the same question.
Growth is still huge, but slowing
Revenue jumped 144% from the first to the second quarter of 2026. From the second to the third it rose 47%, to nearly $17 billion. That is still remarkable, but investors pay for speed, and the speed dropped. Price cuts also took about $600 million off third-quarter sales.
Is $1.25 trillion cheap?
No. It is still 30% more than the $965 billion investors paid in May. It is also about 35 times the $35 billion Anthropic earned over the past four quarters.
Five things that could push it lower
Slower growth. The 2028 target of $190 to $200 billion needs sales to double twice.
The $895 billion bill. Long-term deals for chips and data centres, of which only about $214 billion can be cancelled.
Customers who can leave. The top five supply a quarter of revenue, and most pay as they go.
Cheaper AI. Every price cut shrinks revenue unless usage grows faster.
Washington and the courts. An appeals court upheld the Pentagon’s “supply chain risk” label in September, and a $3 billion music publishers’ lawsuit is still open.
What is the $895 billion bill?
It is not a loan. It is the total of contracts Anthropic has signed to rent computing power: space in data centres, AI chips and the servers that run Claude. Most deals run for several years, some up to a decade. Google’s hosting deal alone runs 7 to 10 years.
| Who | What Anthropic is paying for | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcom | Leasing AI chip equipment | about $161bn |
| Computing in Google’s data centres | at least $121bn | |
| SpaceXAI | Chip capacity | up to $121bn |
| Amazon | Cloud computing | at least $110bn |
| Microsoft | Cloud computing | at least $45bn |
| Nscale and Lambda | Chip capacity | up to $45bn and $41bn |
These partner amounts overlap, so they do not add up to the total. The $895 billion also includes about $451 billion in data centre leases that are signed but have not started yet.
When it has to be paid:
- About $70 billion within the next 12 months
- About $448 billion, half the total, by the end of 2030
- The rest after 2030
Only about $214 billion can be cancelled, and only under certain conditions. The SpaceX deal is the most flexible: after fixed periods end in January and March 2027, either side can walk away with 90 days’ written notice.
Google’s deal, by contrast, runs to July 2033 and cannot be cancelled unless Google breaks the contract. Everything outside that $214 billion must be paid whether customers keep coming or not.
In simple terms: spending $448 billion over the next four years works out to roughly $110 billion a year. That is about twice what Anthropic is likely to earn in all of 2026. The bet only works if sales keep growing fast.
What to watch this week
The price range in an amended filing, the start of the investor roadshow, and whether shares list before Thanksgiving on 26 November. Reuters reported on 5 November that some investors doubt the November timing.
Sources
Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.2tn (Tech Insider, citing Moneycontrol and Bloomberg)
Buyers float $1.1tn after AI rout (AI Weekly, citing Bloomberg)
Investors want $1.5 to $1.6tn (RoboForex)
Anthropic targeting $2tn IPO (Wolf Street)
Alphabet loses about $500bn in a day (JournalArta)
Anthropic S-1/A figures and commitments (BrainDetox)
Submit your review | |