Anthropic IPO Faces Valuation Scrutiny as Wall Street Weighs AI Bellwether

Anthropic's public listing filing is drawing cautious scrutiny from Wall Street investors, who view the IPO as a valuation benchmark for leading AI model developers but are not rushing to buy at offering. Some cite a roughly $1.5 trillion valuation as elevated and expect better entry prices after the stock trades. The filing briefly lifted U.S. stock futures, with the S&P 500 up 0.5% in early trading Monday. Cresalta Investment Management CIO Josh Stevens said he is optimistic on AI and Anthropic but will wait, noting even strong business models can see shares fall as markets reassess supply and demand. Great Hill Capital's Thomas Hayes flagged the valuation, partly citing Anthropic's $80.7 billion first-half net loss, driven mainly by rising fair value of convertible notes; its operating loss was $693 million. Renaissance Capital's Matt Kennedy said investors are no longer giving AI issuers a "blank check" after some summer AI listings fell below their offer prices. The offering may also pull capital from mega-cap cloud stocks, with Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) earnings this week in focus. Zacks' Brian Mulberry noted Meta (META) also plans an equity raise of up to $95 billion, potentially competing for the same funds and pressuring smaller AI names.