Australian Investment Directors Doubt Anthropic's Valuation Ahead of IPO

Some investment directors in Australia are expressing caution regarding the upcoming major IPO of Anthropic PBC, which introduces a new bet on artificial intelligence to the local market, Bloomberg reports.

“It's an incredible company,” said John Pearce, Chief Investment Officer of the Australian pension fund UniSuper, during a panel discussion at the CFA Australia Investment Conference in Melbourne on Thursday. “The question is whether this turns into a fantastic investment.”

Pearce called the valuation of around $2 trillion a “stretch.” He stated that achieving positive cash flow and significant profit in three to four years from a state of heavy losses is a “big ask.” According to documents filed with the SEC on Monday, for the first half of 2026, the company reported a net loss of $80.7 billion with revenue of $16.3 billion, compared to a loss of $13 billion with revenue of $1.2 billion the previous year.

As part of the IPO, Anthropic will offer shares directly to Australian investors after submitting a prospectus to the local securities regulator. The listing will give the creator of the chatbot Claude access to the country's pension industry, valued at 4.8 trillion Australian dollars (about 3.4 trillion US dollars), and to the retail trading base. The offering follows the collapse of the IPO of Firmus Grid Ltd., which could have been one of the largest in the country.

What other investors are saying

Martin Crabb, Chief Investment Officer of Shaw and Partners, told the same panel that a large volume of offerings is hitting the market following the debut of SpaceX, the upcoming listing of Anthropic, and the IPO plans of OpenAI. “I'm a bit cautious about this whole segment,” he said, adding that he wonders why these companies are going public now.

Kylie Willment, Chief Investment Officer of Marsh Investments and Retirement for the Asia-Pacific region, noted that active managers will assess the value of Anthropic. “Mostly we've seen managers being quite cautious about this,” she said.