Anthropic to sell IPO shares directly to Australian retail investors

Anthropic PBC will sell shares directly to Australian investors in its large-scale initial public offering, bringing a fresh AI investment opportunity to a market still recovering from a high-profile failure in a data center deal.

According to a filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, retail investors in Australia will be able to participate in the IPO after Anthropic lodges a prospectus with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The number of shares on offer will be disclosed in subsequent filings. People familiar with the matter said investors expect a valuation of between $1.4 trillion and $1.75 trillion.

The Australian offering will give the maker of the Claude chatbot access to Australia's A$4.8 trillion ($3.4 trillion) pension industry, as well as retail investors eager to put money into major companies at the core of AI. The move follows the failed IPO of Firmus Grid Ltd., which fell short due to insufficient demand from international investors. The deal had been expected to be one of the largest listings in Australian history, and its failure weighed on market sentiment.

"Many Australian investors will be keen to participate in Anthropic's IPO," said Cameron Gleeson, head of investment strategy at Betashares. "Anthropic is very different from Firmus — it sells products that customers are already paying for and spending more on."

Compared with North America and major U.S. tech hubs, Australia lacks the semiconductor or hyperscale technology companies that have been the focus of this year's stock market. That scarcity of investment opportunities drove SpaceX's local offering this year, with retail traders accounting for the bulk of demand.

Australia is among a small group of countries — alongside Japan, Canada and parts of Europe — that allow retail investors to participate directly in Anthropic's IPO. According to the prospectus, professional and sophisticated investors can participate directly in Anthropic's U.S. offering without waiting for Australian regulatory filing. Local pension funds and other large institutional investors fall into the professional category, while sophisticated investors include individuals with net assets of at least A$2.5 million or annual gross income of at least A$250,000.

Of Anthropic's 22 underwriters, Macquarie Group's financing arm is expected to lead the Australian offering. CommSec, the brokerage arm of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, will handle retail marketing, according to the Australian Financial Review. CommSec also handled retail marketing for SpaceX's Australian offering earlier this year, when it received a record more than 28,000 applications.

Josh Gilbert, chief analyst for Asia-Pacific at eToro, said Anthropic's offering "should attract strong local interest, given that AI giants have been developing behind the scenes for years." While Firmus asked investors to back an expansion story heavily reliant on debt, "Anthropic's financials give it a firmer foundation, offering something public markets have rarely seen: direct access to a frontier model maker."

Source: Bloomberg