Anthropic PBC can begin formally marketing its much-anticipated IPO as early as Tuesday, enabling it to make the case to investors that now is the right time to go public despite last week’s swoon in artificial intelligence-related stocks.

The gyrations of the past week briefly sent the Cboe Volatility Index, known as the fear gauge, above 25. That’s a zone in which companies typically postpone their IPOs, said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at IPO research firm Renaissance Capital.

The size of Anthropic’s IPO and its investment case may put it in a different category to the average listing, Kennedy said. Anthropic is targeting an offering as big as SpaceX’s in its record-setting debut, or bigger, Bloomberg News reported.

“It’s such a big deal and such a unique asset that if the company wants to move forward, they can,” Kennedy said. “It just becomes a matter of where it prices.”

Anthropic will start marketing its IPO on Tuesday morning, IFR reported, citing people it didn’t identify. A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment.

The expected decision to move forward would keep the debate over its valuation target going, after some potential investors discussed a range of about $1.1 trillion to $1.3 trillion, Bloomberg News reported Friday. That’s well below where talks had been focused just a month before; in the interim, the Nasdaq 100 Index plunged 14%.

Little time to wait

Anthropic has little time to wait for the market to rediscover its love of AI, if its goal is to go public before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 26.

Starting formal IPO marketing early this week, immediately following the end of a 15-day waiting period following last month’s public filing, would put the company on track to officially price the offering and debut on the Nasdaq Global Select Market the week of Nov. 16.

The effort to win over institutional buyers will kick off immediately, with one-on-one and group meetings between management and investors around the world, either virtually or in person. Retail investors — who may get as much as 20% of the available shares, people familiar with the matter have said — will be tapped from the U.S. to Japan to the UK.

Anthropic will need to quell worries about risks that have loomed larger as its IPO has progressed. Its quarterly revenue growth slowed at the end of the third quarter, and the data centers providing its computing power could be heading for a reckoning as a result of the Democrats’ success in the midterm elections — the trigger for last week’s stock selloff.

Concern over AI safety is also increasing, and although Anthropic is a major proponent of slowing the development of the most advanced models, AI-skeptic Democrats may push interventions that differ from the company’s preferred solutions.

Some loss of confidence in the AI trade is not surprising given the shift in political direction after last week’s U.S. midterm election results, said Vivek Seth, chief executive officer of Shaires Holdings Ltd. The London-listed, AI-focused investment company backs Anthropic for its long-term fundamentals, he added.

“Anthropic is a once-in-a-generation company,” Seth said, citing its rapid growth, institutional backing and more than $130 billion in cash and short-term investments. “Its IPO will establish a market-clearing valuation as conditions stabilize.”

Peter Singlehurst, the head of Baillie Gifford’s private companies team and manager of a fund that already owns a stake in Anthropic, echoed Seth’s praise, calling the company “exceptional” and touting its products’ potential to act more like a collaborator or team member, instead of just helping them work faster.

The biggest opportunity in AI may be in solving the hardest problems, rather than doing the greatest volume of work, Singlehurst explained.

“Some models are cheaper and perfectly good for routine tasks, but customers may pay substantially more for models that can reason better, tackle harder problems and work independently for longer,” he said.

Fixed price or range

Anthropic’s IPO filings left blank spaces indicating a potential price range, suggesting the company intends to give investors a way to signal their enthusiasm, or their indifference, through more than just their decision of whether to bid. That stands in contrast with SpaceX’s $86.2 billion IPO in June, which came at a fixed price that left no wiggle room for negotiation with buyers.

Volatility in AI stocks during the marketing could play an outsize role in whether Anthropic investors lob in bids at the top of the range, after the sharp selloff left potential buyers nursing losses in their portfolios and less eager to take on exposure to new stocks, which are typically riskier. Still, some investors see greater risk to their annual returns from not participating in what could be the biggest IPO of all time, and being left behind.

“Certainly buying shares in a company like this carries risks,” Kennedy said, “but there is also some risk in not owning a company that is disrupting so many other industries.”

“If Anthropic can take what it has achieved in coding into areas such as law, finance and medical research, where exceptional expertise is also highly valued, the opportunity is enormous,” Singlehurst said.

(With assistance from Denise Lu, Kyle Kim and Shirin Ghaffary.)

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