Analysts: Anthropic's IPO Faces a Dilemma After the AI Selloff

Last week's stock market meltdown landed at a critical moment for Anthropic, casting a shadow over the AI developer's expected pre-Thanksgiving debut and raising questions about its valuation and whether it can sustain the next phase of AI growth, Yahoo Finance reported.Neostellar principal Willy Lee told Yahoo Finance's Market Hang that the Anthropic IPO is the only thing that matters for the rest of this year, and that investors want to know whether the company can sustain long-term growth and secure a meaningful share of the AI market, questions he said investment committees are asking every day.Anthropic said revenue grew 1,206% to $33.2 billion in the first nine months of the year, alongside aggregate committed spend of $895.4 billion, primarily for compute and infrastructure. That growth case was tested as investors weighed the Democratic congressional win against the data center build-out; the Nasdaq Composite suffered its worst daily decline since April 2025 on Thursday, led by chip stocks.Prospective buyers have discussed lowering the valuation to a range of $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, with some considering as little as $1.1 trillion, Bloomberg reported, far below estimates of as much as $2 trillion in early October. Anna Rathbun of Grenadilla Advisory said going public would be difficult. Kevin Mahn of Hennion & Walsh said a delay would read as bearish to investors, while a failed or below-expectation IPO could also be taken as bearish, leaving the company damned either way.Investors will look for clues on the health of the AI trade when Nvidia reports on Nov. 17, after hyperscalers Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta and suppliers TSMC and ASML reported. Futurum's Shay Boloor put the chance of a miss at 1%.