AI TRENDS | Anthropic's $100 Billion IPO Plan Becomes a Market Bellwether

Anthropic's planned IPO has become a market bellwether for AI investment. According to Sina Finance, citing Reuters, the company behind Claude could raise as much as $100 billion, exceeding SpaceX's $86 billion IPO record set in June. Meta announced a $95 billion stock offering as technology shares rebounded slightly from their October lows. Its $38 billion offering of common and preferred stock exceeded the initial target, and the company plans to raise another $60 billion through private placements starting next year. Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom are expected to buy a small portion, leaving most of the offering to the market; Meta shares fell less than 2% on Monday after the announcement. Yorkville Ives said Meta's debt-financing phase had ended, with its long-term borrowing rising to $81 billion in the third quarter from $29 billion a year earlier. Separately, Schneider Electric is raising €6 billion ($6.7 billion) to help fund its $23 billion acquisition of U.S. software company PTC. The IPO environment has weakened since SpaceX's listing: the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield has risen from 4.5% to 5%, and U.S. IPOs have gained an average of just 2% this year, with data-center operators performing especially poorly. Deutsche Bank strategists say strong demand is driving the equity issuance boom and that slower growth in new share supply will not end the stock-market rally. Goldman Sachs research found that mega-IPOs have historically created only short-term pressure: the S&P 500 was roughly flat in the weeks around such offerings over the past 30 years before resuming its gains. Goldman analysts said they do not expect new share supply to end the bull market and noted that corporate equity financing this year represents 1% of the total U.S. stock market value.