Anthropic's Filing Ignites AI Rally: Can the IPO Boom Withstand the Cash Flow Test?

On the evening Anthropic filed, three categories of signals around AI assets pointed in different directions. In the secondary market, major AI companies rose broadly, with the Nasdaq closing up 0.8%. In the primary market, valuation rumors fell from a prior peak of about $2 trillion to roughly $1.5 trillion. In the credit market, financing costs for AI infrastructure companies remained elevated, and some neocloud compute providers saw their share prices fall against the trend that day. The filing ignited sentiment, but the divergence in pricing has not disappeared—that is the central thread of this article.

1. Anthropic Hasn't Listed Yet—Why Did AI Stocks Rise First?

On October 26, US Eastern Time, Anthropic publicly filed its S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, intending to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the underwriting, with a syndicate of 22 banks in total, and reports indicate the company is targeting pricing in the week of November 16.

Valuation rumors surrounding the IPO once reached as high as $2 trillion. If the final fundraising size reaches the hundred-billion-dollar level, the deal would break the record set by SpaceX in June of this year. The market heated up quickly after the news broke: the Nasdaq rose 0.8%, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained nearly 3%, and Nvidia, Micron, and Broadcom all moved higher in tandem, while Tesla rose 5.2% in a single day, its largest one-day gain since early September. Falling oil prices and lower US Treasury yields also supported the day's risk appetite.

Why could a single IPO filing drive a rebound across the entire AI sector?

The real reason is that Anthropic is expected to open a public-market pricing window for frontier model companies. Investors finally have the chance to continuously observe just how high a price the capital markets are willing to pay for a fast-growing AI company that is still investing at scale.

Research published on October 15 put forward a judgment: AI monetization capability is stratifying, and the IPO window can serve as a thermometer for observing market confidence. Valuations at the model layer depend on growth and commercialization expectations, while asset-heavy AI infrastructure is more susceptible to financing costs and credit spreads. The degree of divergence between the two determines whether the AI rally is merely a sentiment rebound or whether it has gained broader funding support. Anthropic's filing has brought this pricing test into the market's view ahead of schedule.

Based on available information, the October 26 rally was not driven by a set of entirely new operating data. The S-1 disclosed first-half revenue of about $16.3 billion, up more than 1,300% year over year, which, compared with the presentation data previously circulating in the market, showed no directional change substantial enough to independently explain the sector-wide surge.

What really changed was the market's imagination about future pricing. Before Anthropic's listing, valuations of frontier model companies came mainly from private financing rounds, and investors could only indirectly judge the value of the entire industry through financing news and the performance of a handful of listed companies. Once the IPO proceeds, the market gains another publicly quoted reference point, and investors can continuously observe subscription demand, offering pricing, and post-listing trading performance. This is also why share prices reacted ahead of the formal pricing—some capital is not pricing in the profitability Anthropic has already proven, but rather whether its listing can bring a new valuation benchmark to the entire AI industry chain. However, whether Anthropic's offering performance can ultimately transmit to all AI stocks still depends on different companies' revenue structures, capital expenditures, and financing conditions; a broad rally on the same day does not mean the entire sector has completed a re-rating.

Financing news that emerged the same day revealed another side of AI investment. Broadcom finalized a $63 billion financing structure with Bank of America, Blackstone, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley, acquiring AI chips and networking equipment through newly established special purpose vehicles and then leasing them to Anthropic, corresponding to 1.7 gigawatts of the 3.5-gigawatt compute agreement between the two parties, with equipment delivery starting in 2027. SpaceX completed $40 billion in debt financing to purchase AI chips, primarily Nvidia GPUs. Meta launched a public offering of about $35 billion, including $22.5 billion in forward sales of Class A common stock and $12.5 billion in mandatory convertible preferred stock, plus an at-the-market offering program of up to $60 billion, for a combined cap of about $95 billion, with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom each interested in subscribing up to $5 billion. The structures and uses of these transactions differ, but together they show that the expansion of AI infrastructure is increasingly being completed with the help of external capital.

When the scale of investment exceeds what operating cash flow can comfortably cover, equity and debt financing are no longer merely tools to accelerate growth—they also become important variables determining the pace of expansion and financial risk.

2. The S-1 Isn't All Good News: Losses, Valuation Pullback, and Slowing Growth

The IPO brought new pricing imagination, but the S-1 also reminds investors that high growth does not equal risk-free. What really needs to be broken down is the source of the book losses, changes in valuation expectations, and whether revenue growth can still be sustained.

A massive book loss and operating profitability are not the same thing. The filing disclosed a first-half net loss of $80.7 billion, far higher than the $13 billion in the same period last year. According to media reports, the company mainly attributes the huge loss to fair value changes on convertible bonds; excluding related effects, adjusted operating profit was about $1.6 billion, with specific adjustment items subject to the formal offering document. These two sets of figures reflect different levels: convertible bond valuation changes may amplify reported losses but cannot be directly equated with deterioration in the operating business, and adjusted profitability does not mean cash flow and long-term profitability are free of problems. The risk disclosure also explicitly states that the company may not achieve or sustain profitability in the future. For a company whose high valuation is supported by high growth, this sentence should not be drowned out by market enthusiasm. There are also details on the cost side: in the first half, payment processing fees were $222 million higher year over year, professional service fees were $205 million higher, and IT and cloud costs were $223 million higher—revenue scaling and expense inflation are occurring simultaneously.

Valuation expectations are cooling first, and IPO pricing faces a test. Several media outlets, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that valuation discussions have fallen from a prior peak of about $2 trillion to roughly $1.5 trillion, while the last private financing round in May valued the company at about $965 billion. These figures are market rumors from different points in time and are not the formal offering price, but the changes themselves are worth noting. Valuation moving from nearly a trillion dollars to a higher rumored range and then pulling back shows that even for the most sought-after AI assets, investors' pricing of future growth has boundaries. For the IPO, how high a valuation the media once reported does not matter; what matters is whether the final offering price can be supported by institutional subscription demand. The observation metric proposed earlier is the final offering price's position relative to the rumored range. If pricing is significantly below prior expectations, the market will need to reassess the risk premium for AI assets; if offering demand is strong and pricing is near the top of the range, it would indicate that primary-market confidence remains ample. Changes in valuation rumors alone are not enough to conclude that credit market stress has transmitted to Anthropic.

Revenue is still growing fast, but the growth rate has slowed. According to data circulating from the earlier presentation, Anthropic's second-quarter revenue grew about 1,368% year over year, with a net revenue retention rate (NRR, a company-defined retention metric; definitions and periods subject to the offering document) as high as 900%. These figures show extremely strong commercial expansion momentum, but high growth does not mean the growth rate can be maintained indefinitely. Market-circulated quarterly data show that quarter-over-quarter revenue growth slowed from about 140% in the second quarter to about 46% in the third quarter. Here it is necessary to distinguish year-over-year from quarter-over-quarter: high year-over-year growth shows the company's scale has expanded significantly compared with last year, while the decline in quarter-over-quarter growth means the recent slope of growth is changing—both can be true at the same time. For a company whose valuation is built on future high-speed growth, changes in the growth rate often affect pricing more than the current revenue scale. What the IPO really needs to answer is not only how large Anthropic has grown, but also how long this growth can last and how much profit and cash flow it can ultimately convert into.

3. Overseas Sentiment Reaches A-shares and Hong Kong Stocks—Can It Move from a High Open to Higher Volume?

The overseas rebound brought by Anthropic's filing is expected to provide sentiment support for A-share semiconductor and AI application sectors on October 27, which is a relatively clear sentiment variable before the open. But an overnight rally is only a pre-open signal; whether it can form a sustained move still depends on whether local capital is willing to take the baton.

On the previous trading day (October 26), divergence had already appeared within A-shares: the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.19% to close at 3,697.52 points, the ChiNext Index fell 1.71%, and combined turnover in the two markets shrank to about 1.62 trillion yuan, with signs of capital rotating from high-flying tech stocks to dividend defensive assets. Against this backdrop, whether the overseas AI stock rebound can drive higher A-share turnover is more worth watching than whether the market opens higher.

Macro factors have not exited either. The central bank established a swap facility for large redemptions by non-bank institutions in the bond market the same day, and the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of Japan will hold policy meetings successively this week, with the market widely expecting them to hold steady; these arrangements could all affect liquidity and the pricing of risk assets.

The impact of this overseas rally on A-shares and Hong Kong stocks is better understood first as sentiment transmission, as fundamentals have not yet changed as a result. Post-open turnover, the degree of diffusion within sectors, and whether capital continues to flow back are the basis for judging whether the rebound can continue.

4. November IPO Pricing Is Imminent—Four Signals Will Determine How Far the Rally Can Go

Next, Anthropic's IPO process will provide a set of validation signals more valuable than a single day's share price.

Offering pricing is a direct test of primary-market confidence. If the company prices around mid-November as planned, the gap between the final offering price and the rumored range (about $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion) will help the market judge whether investors are willing to continue paying a high premium for future growth. The level of the offering price is only one dimension; actual subscription demand and the final offering size are equally important.

Subscription structure determines whether enthusiasm can spread. Over-subscription certainly helps boost risk appetite, but it is also necessary to observe whether demand comes from long-term institutional capital or short-term trading capital. If subscriptions are tepid, even a smoothly completed offering may not be enough to provide sustained support for the entire AI sector.

Credit spreads test whether AI infrastructure is under pressure. Financing costs for AI infrastructure companies such as CoreWeave are an important indicator for observing whether enthusiasm at the model layer can transmit to asset-heavy segments. If Anthropic's IPO proceeds smoothly but credit spreads for AI infrastructure companies remain elevated, it would suggest the market may be distinguishing between model commercialization opportunities and infrastructure financing risks, rather than being uniformly bullish on the entire AI industry chain.

The sharp contrast in the financing market is also worth noting. Musk is advancing SpaceX's $40 billion equipment financing while warning that some AI cloud providers lacking independent revenue face financing difficulties and may even see large-scale consolidation. This contrast reveals the core contradiction in current AI investment: capital is still willing to fund projects perceived to have competitive advantages, but not all compute expansion can obtain the same financing conditions.

Only if IPO subscriptions are strong, offering pricing holds firm, and AI infrastructure credit spreads improve in tandem is there reason to believe this rebound is spreading from the sentiment level to a broader recovery in risk appetite. Conversely, if the primary market is hot while the credit side remains tight, the stratified pricing of AI assets could intensify further.

Conclusion: The Filing Only Ignites the Fire—Pricing Is the Real Stress Test

Anthropic's filing gave the AI rally a new catalyst and, for the first time, gave frontier model companies' valuations a chance to undergo continuous public-market scrutiny—but this is not yet proof of a fundamental inflection point.

Rapid first-half revenue growth shows commercialization still has strong momentum. The massive book loss, the pullback in valuation rumors, and the slowing quarterly growth rate remind the market that high growth does not mean valuation has no boundaries. At the same time, AI infrastructure companies still need debt and equity financing to expand investment, and the credit market's attitude may not warm in tandem simply because one model company files for an IPO.

What this filing ignited is the expectation of a re-rating of AI assets; it does not in itself guarantee that all AI companies will continue to command high valuations.

The judgment from October 15 remains unchanged: the IPO window is an indicator for observing market temperature, but the engine of the rally is still growth delivery and financing conditions. The mid-November offering pricing, institutional subscription demand, and AI infrastructure companies' credit spreads will jointly test whether this rebound is a sentiment recovery or the beginning of a convergence in the divergence among the primary market, secondary market, and credit market.

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Data Notes

• Market data: Fin terminal, October 26, 2026 US market close: NVDA 216.00/+2.39%, MU 903.70/+2.98%, AVGO 329.17/+2.33%, TSLA 391.62/+5.21% (recalculated based on terminal close); Nasdaq +0.8% to 26,169, S&P +0.7% to 7,677, Dow +0.3% to 52,364 (MarketWatch compilation); the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index and spot gold at $4,017.2/oz are media compilations; oil prices are not cited with specific figures in the text due to differences between terminal continuous contract and media daily percentage-change conventions; single-day moves have multiple factors, and the text treats the filing as only one catalyst.
• Losses: H1 net loss of $80.7 billion, confirmed by Fortune, Fast Company, and Yahoo Finance after reviewing the S-1, including convertible bond fair value changes; before publication, currency, units, and periods need to be rechecked against SEC filing tables.
• Valuation/metrics: about $2 trillion, about $1.5 trillion, and $965 billion (May private round) are respectively market rumors/private data at different points in time; rumored valuation, IPO valuation, offering price, and fundraising amount are different concepts. NRR of 900% is company-defined and media-reported. Growth rates are unified as percentages: H1 >1,300%, Q2 about 1,368%.
• Transactions/reports: the 22-bank underwriting syndicate is according to Barron's, and the timetable may change. Broadcom's $63 billion structure, Meta's plan of up to $95 billion, SpaceX's $40 billion bond issuance, and Musk's remarks are based on public reports from October 25/27, 2026 (Broadcom IR, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, NYT, etc.). SpaceX's June IPO fundraising has two versions, $75 billion and $85.7 billion; both are retained.

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