Anthropic PBC will offer shares to Australian investors through an initial public offering, following the submission of a prospectus to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Zhitong Finance APP learned that Anthropic PBC will directly offer shares to Australian investors in its highly anticipated initial public offering. According to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, once the prospectus is submitted to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), retail investors in Australia will be able to participate in this offering; the specific number of shares to be issued will be disclosed in subsequent filings. Sources indicate that investors' expected reasonable valuation range is between USD 1.4 trillion and USD 1.75 trillion.
This is a deal destined to go down in history—according to reports compiled by multiple media outlets, Anthropic plans to raise up to approximately $100 billion, surpassing SpaceX's record of $86 billion raised on June 8 this year and becoming the largest IPO in history. The company will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ANT, with the market widely expecting trading to begin in mid-November. For Australia, however, the significance goes beyond simply "getting a piece of the action."
Why Australia? A market lacking AI‑related tenders.
Australia's direct access this time stems from the long-standing absence of core AI assets in its domestic capital markets. Compared with the tech hubs of North America and Northeast Asia, Australia lacks the semiconductor firms and hyperscale cloud providers that have captured global equity‑market attention this year, leaving local investors with limited direct exposure—precisely why SpaceX's Australian offering has been so highly sought after.
SpaceX's precedent provides a quantitative benchmark: CommSec, the brokerage firm responsible for its Australian retail offering, received more than 28,000 applications at the time, setting a record for the platform (though the firm did not disclose the final number of shares allocated to retail investors). Meanwhile, Australia's pension industry—valued at roughly A$4.8 trillion (US$3.4 trillion)—was the primary institutional target for this offering.
Josh Gilbert, eToro's Chief Analyst for the Asia-Pacific region, believes that after "the most prominent names in the AI space have been quietly developing behind closed doors for several years," this offering "should attract strong local interest." Compared to Firmus's debt‑driven growth model, Anthropic's financials place it on a more solid footing and offer something the public markets have rarely seen: direct exposure to a cutting‑edge model developer.
Firmus's Shadow: The deal that collapsed just two weeks ago
The backdrop to this offering is that "the Australian market is still reeling from the collapse of a data-center deal"—Firmus Grid. The NVIDIA-backed AI data-center company had originally planned to become Australia's largest IPO in nearly three decades: priced at A$11 per share, it aimed to raise up to US$5.5 billion, valuing the company at roughly A$43.7 billion (about US$30.4 billion), with an initial public listing scheduled for October 23. However, during the bookbuilding process, demand weakened markedly—some potential investors worried about supply pressures stemming from existing shareholders' rapid post-IPO sell-offs, while others questioned why the pricing was nearly three times higher than the valuation in an August private‑placement round (US$10.5 billion).
According to reports, the underwriters at one point considered lowering the price to around AUD 8 per share. Ultimately, on October 9, Firmus announced it was withdrawing its ASX listing application, citing "recent market volatility and current market conditions," and shifting instead to private‑market financing. The company began in 2019 with Bitcoin mining; of its roughly 1 gigawatt of pipeline capacity, only about 42 megawatts have been commissioned. Local institutional investors have shown little enthusiasm, with a Morningstar analyst describing the stock as exhibiting "boom‑and‑bust" characteristics, while another fund bluntly stated, "We're struggling with the fundamentals." Meanwhile, shares of its shareholder, Maas Group, plunged as much as 30% during trading that day.
It is precisely this contrast that forms the central argument of Cameron Gleeson, Head of Investment Strategy at BetaShares: "Many Australian investors would be eager to participate in Anthropic's IPO. Anthropic and Firmus are entirely different investments—Anthropic sells products that customers are already paying for, and spending on these products continues to grow."
Anthropic's ledger: "Having paying customers" holds up.
The prospectus for the first time disclosed the full financial profile of Claude's developer. Revenue for the first half of 2026 totaled $16.286 billion, compared with $1.16 billion in the same period last year; prior to that, revenue had grown from $41 million in 2023 to $386 million in 2024 and $4.59 billion in 2025. In the second quarter alone, revenue reached $11.56 billion, and the company posted its first-ever quarterly operating profit of $974 million.
Although the overall loss was substantial, it stemmed primarily from accounting adjustments rather than cash outflows: in the first half of the year, the net loss totaled $80.748 billion, with approximately $72.388 billion attributable to changes in the fair value of financial instruments such as convertible notes, reflecting the company's rising valuation. By contrast, operating losses for the same period were only $693 million, while adjusted operating profit reached $1.62 billion. Operating cash flow turned positive at $3.93 billion, and as of June 30, cash and short-term investments combined stood at $131.65 billion. This structural profile clearly sets the company apart from Firmus's typical growth‑stage narrative, which relies heavily on external financing.
The customer base remains robust: as of September 30, over 1,900 customers had spent more than $1 million in the past 12 months, and more than 11,900 had spent over $100,000 (compared with 950 and 11,000, respectively, a year earlier), with net revenue retention exceeding 900%. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies are among its clients. However, this growth comes at a steep cost: in the first half of the year, spending on computing power and infrastructure totaled approximately $8.9 billion, while future commitments for computing capacity range, depending on the accounting methodology, from $518 billion to over $600 billion.
Macquarie Takes the Lead, with CommSec Re-Emphasizing the Retail Segment
The underwriting syndicate is sizable; according to Australian media citing sources familiar with the matter, Macquarie Group's capital‑raising arm is expected to lead the Australian portion of the offering, while CommSec, the brokerage unit of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, will spearhead retail marketing—CommSec also handled SpaceX's retail‑investor marketing in Australia.
It is important to note the division of responsibilities: Macquarie is leading the underwriting, while CommSec is handling retail‑focused marketing and distribution; these are distinct roles. Furthermore, as the S‑1 filing has not yet set a price range, the Australian prospectus has not yet been submitted to ASIC. Drawing on SpaceX's experience, it typically takes about one week from finalizing the pricing range to filing the Australian documents, meaning that local pricing, allocation, and distribution arrangements remain uncertain at this stage.
The regulatory stance has already been set. ASIC stated that it would adopt a "pragmatic and constructive" approach to this offering, consistent with how it handled SpaceX's June IPO, but demanded substantive disclosures regarding local risks, governance differences, and investor rights. The disclosure documents provided to Australian investors will consist of the U.S.-registered filings supplemented by an Australia-specific addendum. This requirement is far from mere formalism: Anthropic's governance structure is unique—seven founders collectively hold a single Class F share that carries 50.1% of the voting rights, a majority of board seats are appointed by a trust, and a charitable foundation holds 5% of non-voting shares; moreover, the founders have pledged to donate 80% of their personal holdings. Retail investors are acquiring economic returns, not control.
The offering also extends to Japan, Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and select European markets; Australia is among the few jurisdictions that permit retail investors to participate directly.
Professional investors don't have to wait: two participation pathways
Under the prospectus, professional and sophisticated investors may participate directly in Anthropic's U.S. offering without waiting for Australian regulatory filings. Large institutional investors, such as pension funds, are classified as professional investors; the statutory threshold for sophisticated investors is a net worth of at least AUD 2.5 million or an annual income of at least AUD 250,000.
Local brokerage IG Australia has taken the lead in launching a channel that allows traders to subscribe for single shares. Its Managing Director, Michael Jones, noted that Australian retail investors have historically found it difficult to secure allocations in major U.S. stock IPOs. Meanwhile, trading volume for Anthropic on the company's CFD market has surged more than 27-fold since its launch, with early indicative demand even stronger than that seen for SpaceX back then. Morningstar, meanwhile, points to timing as a factor: this offering comes after the U.S. midterm elections, when policy directions and the earnings outlook for the AI sector have become clearer—potentially an advantage.
In other words, institutional investors in Australia have long been entering the market through indirect channels—this time, it's the "ordinary retail investors" who are gaining access. And this is precisely where market sentiment is most delicate: it both reflects the record-breaking retail demand for SpaceX and bears the psychological scars left by Firmus's failed IPO.
The risks are equally apparent. The prospectus itself cautions that the rapid revenue growth "cannot be guaranteed to continue at any rate"; customer concentration remains high, with two unnamed clients reportedly accounting for roughly 23% of first-half revenue, or about 25% when including the top five customers, while no single client exceeds 10%. Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, described this as "a referendum on AI trading as a whole": if the IPO surges, more AI firms will line up to go public; if it falters, tech‑stock valuations could quickly be re‑priced. Lightshed's view is even more extreme—Anthropic "could become the world's most valuable company, or it could end up bankrupt."
For Australia, there is an aspect that goes beyond finance: Anthropic has explicitly identified Australia in its prospectus as the only location outside North America with confirmed data‑center capacity, and has publicly lobbied to amend local copyright regulations, arguing that such changes are a prerequisite for advancing its multi‑billion‑dollar data‑center investments. Meanwhile, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) became a strategic investor in Anthropic as early as 2025, with its annual report disclosing that this stake was valued at US$1.5 billion as of end-June.