Update: Anthropic's IPO books are about 6 times covered, which implies roughly $366 billion of orders

Demand for Anthropic's IPO is running at about six times the shares available, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, as relayed by Yahoo Finance and StockTwits and by Seeking Alpha's morning markets note on Friday. It is a new development since our report on the price range. We have not seen the order book ourselves, so treat "about six times" as Bloomberg's sourced figure, not a filed number. Disclosure: the Chronicle's newsroom uses Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic.

The number behind the number

The amended registration statement on SEC EDGAR sets 825 million Class A shares at $70 to $78. At the $74 midpoint that is about $61.1 billion. If orders are six times that, the book holds roughly $366 billion of indications. That is our arithmetic, and a rough one: it assumes the six-times figure refers to the Class A offering and to the midpoint price, and indications of interest are not money in hand. Large buyers routinely order more than they expect to get.

The practical point is for ordinary buyers. investingLive, also citing Bloomberg, says the deal is about $90 billion including the private placement, which would top SpaceX's June record of about $86 billion. With coverage that heavy and existing backers given priority, many new investors should expect smaller allocations than they ask for, and the first-day price will reflect that scarcity.

Why Nvidia, AMD, Micron and Broadcom are in the story

The S-1/A also commits Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC Partners to buy $26.0 billion of non-listed Class N stock at the IPO price, contingent on the IPO closing. At the midpoint that is about $10 billion each for Google and Nvidia, $2.5 billion for AMD and $1.0 billion for Broadcom, per our earlier read of the filing.

So four chip names that sell to Anthropic are also becoming shareholders. That cuts two ways. A strong debut marks up their stakes and signals that the customer can keep funding its compute commitments, about $451.6 billion through 2030 according to the filing. But some of the revenue in their order backlogs is then their own money coming back, a circularity analysts have flagged. A weak debut would hit the customer and the stakes together.

The setting matters. Nvidia closed at $166.19 on Nov. 12, 30.5% below its Oct. 6 peak, after CEO Jensen Huang's resignation. The chart above shows how far the group has to recover.

What to watch

• The final price against the $70 to $78 range. Per investingLive, trading is expected to start next Thursday; the filing leaves the date open and terms may change.
• Friday's roadshow livestream with Dario Amodei and JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, reported by StockTwits.
• Whether the underwriters use their option on 123.75 million more shares.

We tried to read the Nasdaq and Motley Fool pieces headlined "Anthropic Delivers Huge News" for these stocks but could not open them, so nothing here relies on them.

Sources: Anthropic, PBC Form S-1/A, SEC EDGAR; Bloomberg via investingLive and Seeking Alpha. Price data via Yahoo Finance. This is market information, not investment advice.