Catenaa, Monday, August 31, 2026- Anthropic IPO is casting a long shadow over companies’ US listing plans, as they try to find room for their deals to grab attention after the Labor Day holiday.
The Claude developer is preparing to file for an initial public offering that’s expected to raise as much as SpaceX’s record $86.2 billion debut, if not more, in the coming weeks.
Some firms and their backers are finding it hard to get the attention of long-term-oriented investors and sovereign wealth funds as the prospect of an Anthropic IPO looms, Bloomberg News reported.
The rush to get out ahead of a giant IPO feels familiar. A similar dynamic unfolded in the run-up to SpaceX’s listing, when 14 sizable companies went public in the month before Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI firm debuted.
Those hurried entries haven’t paid off, with the companies posting a weighted average loss of 9.5%, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The coming stretch leaves IPO candidates with even less room to schedule than usual, thanks to November’s mid-term elections. Add hotter-than-expected inflation to the mix, and companies may decide it’s better to dance around Anthropic’s timing than stay on the sidelines.
The companies briefing money managers on their IPO plans in recent weeks are heavily tilted toward AI themes, with cloud computing firm Nscale joining Anthropic in the queue. A notable exception is Oura Health Oy, a maker of smart rings that track health, fitness and sleep, which may raise billions of dollars in an IPO as soon as next month.
Tapping into data centers’ thirst for power, private equity-backed temporary power provider Aggreko and CoVolt Power, a solar and battery storage company, both filed IPO paperwork publicly in August and could go before Anthropic.
SoftBank Group-backed digital infrastructure firm SB Energy is expected to target an IPO that will raise more than $5 billion while Roark Capital-owned Inspire Brands could test the market before November’s elections.
Earlier this month, Switch filed confidentially for a listing that could take place as soon as November; Bloomberg reported in July that the company had kicked off a new funding round in which it could seek a valuation approaching $50 billion including debt.
Bankers say it’s not going to be a free-for-all for every company with IPO dreams when AI is the flavor of the month, however.
The wave of larger companies chasing enormous sums also makes it tough for smaller deals to get noticed.
Should they stumble, they can console themselves with the knowledge that this year’s IPOs haven’t been roaring successes in the after-market.
The weighted-average return for US listings this year is 5.6%, markedly lagging a 13% return for the S&P 500 and a 17% gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100.
Bloomberg Intelligence said that biotech IPOs are a barometer of sector health, and the $329 million average raised in the US in 2026, the highest since 2018 and well above recent banner years, points to a strong year-end, with 30 listings within reach.
