Hey Traders,
Anthropic’s one of the most important companies on the planet, and I’d still trade ANT with defined risk rather than back up the truck.
The roadshow kicked off Tuesday with a range of $70 to $78 a share.
At the top end, that values the company at about $1.4 trillion fully diluted. Pricing’s expected November 18th, with trading on the 19th.
That’s well under the $2 trillion people were tossing around in September, and the book’s reportedly covered across the whole range anyway.
It’s also the strangest IPO I’ve seen in 30 years.
The S-1 spends roughly 80 of its 261 pages on risk factors. It warns that the company’s own models can show self-preserving behavior, up to and including trying to resist shutdown.
The CEO keeps warning about what AI will do to white-collar jobs.
Then, on roadshow day, Anthropic launched Claude Sheets and took a straight shot at Excel. Microsoft fell as much as 3% intraday, and it’s one of seven strategic partners buying a combined $26 billion of stock at the IPO price. So Redmond’s writing a check to the company that just swung at Office.
Big money would rather own the thing that might eat its portfolio than watch it happen from the sidelines.
Who Owns the Building
On the surface, ANT looks a lot like SpaceX did in June. Both are trillion-dollar debuts with founder control and a story bigger than the spreadsheet.
Dig into the filings, though, and Anthropic turns out to be one of SpaceX’s tenants. Its S-1 shows deals worth up to $120.5 billion to rent Nvidia-powered compute from SpaceX through 2029. SpaceX’s own filing shows a single customer made up 34.5% of its third-quarter revenue, and Bloomberg says that customer is Anthropic. Either side can walk on 90 days’ notice, which means the landlord can come back and reprice the rent.
That’s the risk I’d underline. The amended S-1 puts total commitments at about $895 billion, nearly all of it compute and infrastructure. When Reuters went through the earlier draft, it found about 80% of those obligations couldn’t be cancelled. Meanwhile, 80% of Anthropic’s revenue is consumption-based. If customers pull back, revenue shrinks while the compute bills keep coming due.
The growth is what gets people to look past that. Revenue hit $33.2 billion in the first nine months of this year, against roughly $2.5 billion over the same stretch of 2025. The pace is cooling, though. Third-quarter revenue grew 47% over the second quarter, after 144% the quarter before. And that $895 billion tab runs about 27 times what the company booked in those nine months.
The Back Door In
If you own software or old-line tech, you’re already short Anthropic, whether you meant to be or not. Tuesday’s Microsoft tape showed you that. A small ANT position can work as insurance in case the disruptor keeps winning.
The cleaner play might be the companies cashing those compute checks. Google, SpaceX, Amazon and Microsoft alone hold about $397 billion of Anthropic’s contracts between them, and the chip, memory and power names underneath them get paid whether ANT trades up or down after the open.
Once options list, expect rich implied vol. Cash-secured puts struck below the IPO price get you paid to wait for a better entry. Defined-risk LEAPS spreads cap what you can lose if the story cracks.
Before You Hit Buy
Skip the opening-day chase. Reports have put the retail slice at 15% to 20% of the deal, so plenty of people will be bidding at the open. Pick your price before the bell and stick to it.
Watch which valuation you’re quoting. The $1.4 trillion counts options and RSUs. On shares actually outstanding, Reuters puts it closer to $1 trillion at the top of the range.
Know what your vote’s worth. The Long-Term Benefit Trust elects most of the board. The seven co-founders hold a single share that carries 50.1% of the vote on most other matters. Class A buyers get the economics and very little say.
And keep an eye on the price war. Price cuts tied to new models and contract discounts shaved about $600 million off third-quarter revenue. Cheaper open-weight models keep closing the gap, and Anthropic’s premium pricing has to hold up against them.
I own the companies collecting on the AI buildout and trade the ones paying for it with defined risk. Anthropic’s the most impressive company I’ve ever seen on the paying side, and that $895 billion tab tells me which bucket it goes in.
Mark Sebastian has been playing the Anthropic IPOP for a while in Project HALO. He put out ten option plays and won 7. He’s got a bunch more coming out around the IPO debut itself.
Here for a good time… AND a long time,
Hans