Anthropic PBC plans to raise as much as $3.5 billion from Japanese investors in its US IPO, bringing the milestone share sale to a market where new equity supply has fallen to a 14-year low.
Mizuho Securities will manage the Japanese portion of the offering, while Goldman Sachs, Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, and Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities will help handle investor orders. Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are also among the underwriters. The arrangement makes Japan one of only a few markets whose investors can participate directly in the large IPO, alongside investors in Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe.
Against a backdrop of successive mega financings in the AI sector, Anthropic's IPO will serve as an important test of market appetite. Meta Platforms is seeking to raise up to $95 billion through sales of common and preferred stock, while Alphabet is seeking up to $85 billion in equity financing. The dense wave of AI-related share sales will test investors' capacity to absorb the supply.
IPO timing: companies racing to tap the stock market
Japan's unusual supply-demand backdrop makes it an important target market for the offering. According to regulatory filings, new share issuance in Japan has shrunk to a 14-year low, leaving investors facing a scarcity of quality new listings, which provides Anthropic with a relatively favorable issuance window.
Anthropic filed its long-awaited IPO application last month, joining a recent wave of companies seeking equity financing. The company owns the Claude chatbot and is one of the most closely watched AI foundation model companies.
Both the size and timing of the offering are landmark in significance. At a time when Meta Platforms and Alphabet are each pursuing equity financings in the tens of billions of dollars, Anthropic's IPO will join them in testing the market's ability to absorb a new wave of dense AI-related supply, as well as institutional investors' risk appetite in the current environment.
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