Anthropic IPO Targets $100 Billion Raise, Driving Major Fees for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley

Anthropic, the AI research company behind Claude, is expected to go public as soon as October, with reporting putting the target raise at as much as $100 billion. That would exceed the $86 billion SpaceX raised last year in what remains the largest IPO on record. The raise figure is separate from the roughly $2 trillion valuation the company is reported to be seeking, and the two should not be read as the same number.

Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) are reported as lead advisors, with JPMorgan, Citigroup and Barclays also participating. On the SpaceX listing the underwriting syndicate split a fee pool of about $500 million, of which Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley took roughly $100 million each. A deal of this size could produce comparable or larger fees, though the split depends on roles that reporting describes as still being negotiated. No S-1 was on file publicly as of September 18, so nothing here is a filed term.

Both banks come into the deal off strong investment banking quarters. Goldman Sachs posted record revenue of $20.3 billion with investment banking revenue up 55% year over year, and Morgan Stanley posted record net revenue of $21.3 billion with investment banking fees up 60%. Their shares have since pulled back from summer highs, which is the backdrop against which the fee opportunity is being discussed.

What matters next is the paperwork rather than the headline number. The S-1, when it lands, is what turns a reported $100 billion target into a priced range, and it is also where the lock-up terms, the governance structure and the audited financials become checkable. Until then the gap between the reported raise and the reported valuation is the thing to watch, because the two figures imply very different float sizes.