Anthropic's IPO wobbles as tech stocks crash

Anthropic was supposed to go public this month in what bankers called the biggest tech listing ever. Investors now want a much lower price. People familiar with the talks told Reuters that potential buyers want the company valued around $1.5 trillion. That's down from nearly $2 trillion. A second Reuters report the same day said next week's roadshow might not happen on schedule.

Anthropic doesn't need the IPO money to survive. It has billions in the bank and backing from Amazon and Google. But going public at a lower price than expected would still sting. It would set a public benchmark for how much the whole AI industry is really worth. And that number is under attack right now. This week's stock selloff hit US markets hard. Chipmakers, data-center landlords, and AI labs all got hit hardest. Anthropic's own IPO math leans on investors believing the AI boom still has years of growth ahead of it. A lower price doesn't kill that story, but it's the market publicly admitting it believes a little less of it.

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Does the roadshow even happen next week? That's the immediate question. If Anthropic delays, it risks looking like it's running from a bad market instead of toward a sure thing. If it goes ahead anyway at a lower price, that becomes the new floor. Every other AI company gets measured against it. Either way, this isn't just about stock charts anymore. Anthropic's IPO was supposed to prove the AI boom is real money, not just promises. Right now, it's proving the opposite is at least possible.