Anthropic PBC will sell shares directly to Australian investors in its blockbuster IPO, bringing a fresh AI investment target to a market still reeling from the failed listing of a data centre project.
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 later documents. People familiar with the matter said investors expect a fair valuation range of US$1.4 trillion to US$1.75 trillion.
The Australian offering allows the developer of the Claude chatbot to tap the country's A$4.8 trillion (US$3.4 trillion) pension industry, as well as retail investors eager to back leading AI companies.
Firmus Grid Ltd had been slated to be one of the largest listings in Australian history, but the IPO was pulled due to insufficient demand from overseas investors, dealing a heavy blow to market sentiment.
Betashares head of investment strategy Cameron Gleeson said many Australian investors will enthusiastically take part in Anthropic's IPO. Anthropic is completely different from Firmus: Anthropic already has paying customers, and customer spending continues to rise.
Compared with markets dominated by technology in North Asia and the United States, Australia lacks the semiconductor companies and large cloud providers that have been this year's stock market darlings. That scarcity also supported this year's SpaceX offering in the country, where retail investors became the main source of demand.
Australia, along with Japan, Canada and parts of Europe, is among the few countries where retail investors can subscribe directly to Anthropic's IPO. Anthropic's prospectus states that professional investors and sophisticated investors do not need to wait for Australian regulatory clearance and can participate directly in Anthropic's U.S. offering. Local pension funds (superannuation) and other large institutional investors qualify as professional investors. Sophisticated investors include individuals with net assets of at least A$2.5 million or annual income of no less than A$250,000.
Among Anthropic's 22 underwriters, the financing arm of Macquarie Group is expected to serve as lead manager for the Australian offering. Media reports, citing people familiar with the matter, said Commonwealth Bank's brokerage arm CommSec is handling retail promotion. Earlier this year, CommSec also handled retail promotion for SpaceX in Australia, receiving more than 28,000 applications, a record, though it did not disclose the final number of shares allocated to clients.
eToro senior Asia-Pacific analyst Josh Gilbert said that for years top AI companies have developed in the private sphere, and this Anthropic offering is expected to attract significant local attention. Firmus drew investors with a debt-fuelled expansion story, while Anthropic has solid fundamentals and brings a rare target to public markets: the chance to invest directly in a frontier large-model developer.
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