Anthropic seeks up to $3.5B from Japanese investors in US IPO

Felix Laurent 2 Nov 2026 3 min read

Funding

Anthropic aims to raise up to $3.5B from Japanese investors in its US initial public offering. Reuters and Bloomberg reported the Japanese filing on Nov 2, 2026, a week after Anthropic filed to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT.

What was reported

According to a filing dated Nov 2, Anthropic will sell up to 552.9 billion yen of shares in Japan, about $3.5B, as part of its US listing, Reuters reported. The reports describe them as new shares. The money would go to working capital, operating expenses and capital spending.

The filing does not state the size or valuation of the whole IPO. Anthropic's own S-1 announcement, dated Oct 26, says the number of shares and the price range have not yet been determined. The Japanese portion is the first hard number on the offering, and it has a recent benchmark.

How Japan compares

The same report cites the SpaceX IPO in June. Japanese investors were allocated $2.2B of shares in that listing. Anthropic's Japanese portion would be about 60% larger.

The reports differ on the size of the SpaceX deal: Reuters, as retold by BigGo, puts it at $75B, while CNBC says it ultimately raised $85.7B. Either way, Japan took a small slice of the record listing. Anthropic's total is unknown, so Japan's share of it cannot be calculated. The S-1 gives more about the company than about the offer.

What the S-1 shows

According to CNBC's reading of the prospectus, Anthropic's revenue in the first half of 2026 was $16.29B, up from $1.16B a year earlier. Net revenue retention was around 900% as of Sept 30. More than 11,900 customers spend at least $100,000 a year, and five customers made up about a quarter of revenue in the first nine months.

The losses are large too. The net loss for the first half was $80.7B, against $12.9B a year earlier. CNBC says most of it came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes and derivatives, not from operations. Anthropic also reports about $417B in future obligations to compute providers.

Anthropic will list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the deal. Amazon, which has invested $13B since 2023, holds nonvoting shares, and its stake is capped at 12%. Those figures shape how investors read the price.

Anthropic valuation from $183B in September 2025 and $965B in May 2026 to a reported $1.5–2T IPO range, and first-half revenue up from $1.16B to $16.29B

What investors say

Investors are split, CNBC reported. Denny Fish of Janus Henderson called it "a generational moment". Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson said investors want exposure to the pure play, and the deal should do well if priced correctly.

Skeptics point to the losses and the compute bills. Roger McNamee said the S-1 should be viewed as "speculative fiction". David Trainer of New Constructs called the IPO "a huge Wall Street grift". The price will settle that argument.

What is still open

Reuters has reported that some investors discussed a valuation of about $1.5T. Other reports put the target at up to $2T. In May, Anthropic raised money at $965B, and in September 2025 at $183B. Neither the S-1 nor the Japanese filing gives a valuation.

A summary circulating online says Mizuho Securities will handle the Japanese portion, as part of the international offering rather than a separate listing in Japan. None of the reports we read names a Japanese bank, so we do not treat that as confirmed. No source says how the Japanese shares split between institutions and individual investors.

So what does the Japan tranche tell us about the IPO? That it will be big. Up to $3.5B from one country, more than Japan took in SpaceX's record listing, points to a very large total offering. But the size, price range and valuation are still blank, and the S-1 pairs fast revenue growth with an $80.7B half-year loss. Until Anthropic sets a price range, the Japanese figure is the only fixed point in the deal.