Anthropic’s $100 Billion IPO Roadshow Meets a Volatile Market

By Elena Vasquez

What will Anthropic’s IPO raise?

Anthropic plans to raise $80 billion to $100 billion in an IPO valuing Claude’s maker at $1.25 trillion to $1.75 trillion, the Financial Times reported.

The company began pitching institutional investors despite last week’s technology selloff. The Financial Times said Anthropic remained prepared to accept a lower valuation.

The Financial Times described the listing as Anthropic’s path to becoming the first publicly traded frontier model company. That would give public investors a direct measure of appetite for frontier AI.

Kalshi’s prediction market put the odds of an IPO before December back above 80%. Those odds had fallen during the selloff.

Anthropic is targeting a debut before Thanksgiving, the FT reported. Investors told the FT that the company was planning the $80 billion to $100 billion raise at $1.25 trillion to $1.75 trillion.

The target range remains well above Anthropic’s current $965 billion valuation, the FT reported. It also falls short of the $2 trillion investors wanted as recently as a month ago.

One large investor told the FT: “My view is they will price it very conservatively, call it $1.5tn, and go up from there,” according to the report. Other participants in the deal expected an even lower valuation, roughly $1.3 trillion.

The Wall Street Brunch episode framed the effort as a historic IPO roadshow during a volatile midterm week. Earnings reports and October inflation data will crowd the same stretch.

How conservative will Anthropic’s pricing be?

The choice between $1.3 trillion and $1.75 trillion carries stakes for the first public frontier model company, whose valuation would test institutional appetite after a volatile week for technology shares.

The lower end reflects caution from large investors, the FT reported. Anthropic could accept a price below the $2 trillion ambition investors discussed only a month earlier.

For institutions, the roadshow will test demand after a volatile week for the broader market. The episode described Wall Street as still reeling from the midterm stretch, with little time to settle before new data arrives.

That makes institutional demand the clearest near-term signal for the listing. A pre-Thanksgiving debut would expose the gap between private-company ambition and public-market pricing.

What could October inflation change?

According to the Wall Street Brunch outlook, Tuesday’s October consumer price index release should show a 0.3% monthly rise in headline CPI. The core rate, which excludes food and energy, should rise 0.2%.

The same outlook put consumer inflation at 3.7% and annual core inflation at 2.6%.

Wells Fargo economists said a softer core reading “would be welcome after September’s upside surprise, but it would do little to alter the broader picture of 2026 being a lost year for bringing core inflation back to 2%.”

The bank added: “We expect the report to reinforce the slow and uneven nature of the disinflationary process, underpinning our expectation for the FOMC to hike once more in December.”

The episode previewed the data as a potential support for another Fed hike. Fed funds futures put the odds of a quarter-point hike in December at 76%.

The CPI report matters to Anthropic’s roadshow because investors are already weighing a lower valuation amid the broader technology selloff. Rate expectations can reshape the valuation investors will accept for an AI company.

Which earnings can move the market?

The coming earnings week is lighter for the S&P 500, with just 13 companies scheduled to report, according to the Wall Street Brunch calendar.

• Monday: KKR (KKR), Rocket Lab (RKLB), Take-Two Interactive (TTWO), and Occidental Petroleum (OXY).
• Tuesday: CoreWeave (CRWV).
• Thursday: Cisco (CSCO), Applied Materials (AMAT), and Nebius (NBIS).

The calendar also reaches the quantum computing sector. Quantum Computing (QUBT) reports Monday, while Rigetti (RGTI) and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) report Tuesday.

SA analyst Lee Bailey said D-Wave “is selling real technology, and its enterprise traction bears watching.”

He added: “I'm not ruling out the prospect of quantum optimization turning into a large enterprise business,” Bailey warned that at $9, “there's simply not enough margin for error in how many success factors must occur.”

Bailey rates D-Wave stock a Sell, with a working fair value of about $3. His warning puts commercialization risk ahead of technical promise, even as he acknowledged that D-Wave sells real technology with enterprise traction worth watching.

Why did Berkshire Hathaway accelerate its buybacks?

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A and BRK.B) repurchased $9.6 billion of shares in Q3, according to the weekend company update in the Wall Street Brunch episode. That exceeded Visible Alpha’s $1.6 billion estimate.

The purchases lifted Berkshire’s full-year stock buybacks to $14.4 billion. Operating earnings fell about 6% year over year to $12.7 billion, as weakness in its insurance businesses weighed on the results.

The contrast puts Berkshire’s capital-return strategy against softer insurance earnings. The episode described the investing giant as accelerating repurchases even as operating performance weakened.

What does the Huang allegation mean for Nvidia?

U.S. intelligence officials believe Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with a Chinese woman who allegedly served as a spy for China’s main intelligence agency, the FT reported.

Based on information obtained by American intelligence, U.S. officials wrote a memo earlier this year. The memo stated that Huang had been romantically involved with Alice Huang, an executive at a Singapore-based Nvidia client.

U.S. intelligence officials believe China’s Ministry of State Security recruited Alice Huang as a spy. She served as an executive at Megaspeed, a company facing U.S. scrutiny over allegations that it smuggled advanced Nvidia chips into China.

Nvidia said Huang’s interactions with Alice Huang were ordinary customer meetings. The company said no sensitive company information was shared.

The allegation matters because it links Nvidia’s CEO to a company under U.S. scrutiny over alleged smuggling of advanced chips into China. Nvidia’s response addresses information sharing, while the FT report also raises a separate claim about Huang’s personal relationship.

What else is on the income calendar?

Baker Hughes (BKR) and IBM (IBM) go ex-dividend Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Brunch calendar. Baker Hughes pays its dividend on Nov. 20, while IBM pays on Dec. 10.

The next checkpoints are clear: Tuesday’s inflation report, Anthropic’s institutional pricing and a targeted pre-Thanksgiving debut. Those signals will show whether investors accept trillion-dollar AI valuations while weighing U.S. security allegations around Nvidia’s China business.