Anthropic PBC’s IPO is casting a long shadow over companies’ US listing plans, as they try to find room for their deals to grab attention after the Sept. 7 Labor Day holiday.
The Claude developer is preparing to file publicly for an initial public offering that’s expected to raise as much as SpaceX’s record $86.2 billion debut, if not more, in the coming weeks.
Some firms and their backers are finding it hard to get the attention of long-term-oriented investors and sovereign wealth funds when the prospect of an Anthropic IPO is imminent, according to people familiar with the preparations.
See more: The Mega-cap IPOs’ Impact on Index Funds
The rush to get out ahead of a giant IPO feels familiar. A similar dynamic unfolded in the run-up to SpaceX’s listing, when 14 sizable companies went public in the month before Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI firm debuted. Those hurried entries haven’t paid off, with the companies posting a weighted average loss of 9.5%, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The coming stretch leaves IPO candidates even less room for scheduling than usual, thanks to November’s mid-term elections. Add hotter than expected inflation to the mix, and companies may decide it’s better to dance around Anthropic’s timing than stay on the sidelines.
“It’s a little bit trickier here which is why I expect a very busy September and creeping into October,” said Rob Stowe, head of Americas equity capital markets at Barclays Plc, who cited hurdles including a mid-September Federal Reserve meeting, followed by the election in early November.
“There will be a lot of activity but it will be concentrated into a few windows,” he said.
The companies briefing money managers on their IPO plans in recent weeks are heavily tilted toward AI themes, with cloud computing firm Nscale joining Anthropic in the queue. A notable exception is Oura Health Oy, a maker of smart rings that track health, fitness and sleep, which may raise billions of dollars in an IPO as soon as next month.
Tapping into data centers’ thirst for power, private equity-backed temporary power provider Aggreko Plc and CoVolt Power Inc., a solar and battery storage company, both filed IPO paperwork publicly in August and could go before Anthropic.
SoftBank Group Corp.-backed digital infrastructure firm SB Energy is expected to target an IPO that will raise more than $5 billion while Roark Capital-owned Inspire Brands Inc. could test the market before November’s elections.
Earlier this month, Switch Inc. filed confidentially for a listing that could take place as soon as November; Bloomberg reported in July that the company had kicked off a new funding round in which it could seek a valuation approaching $50 billion including debt.
Flavor of the Month
Bankers say it’s not going to be a free-for-all for every company with IPO dreams when AI is the flavor of the month, however.
“Non-thematic IPOs have been trickier,” said Eddie Molloy, co-head of global equity capital markets at Morgan Stanley. “There’s so much capital around these big themes — the broader AI infrastructure ecosystem and aerospace and defense — so if you’re a small or mid-cap issuer not around these mega trends, it’s been harder to garner buyside focus.”
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