Anthropic's $70 to $78 IPO Range Is Below the Last Secondary Prints. Here Is Every Holder's Number.

Why it matters

For eighteen months every Anthropic trade in the secondary market was priced against a number that did not exist yet. Now it does, and it is lower than the last people to buy expected. The range was set in a week when the Nasdaq fell 5.5%, with an order book that covered anyway, which means the banks chose a price that leaves room rather than one that reaches. For a holder, the question is no longer what Anthropic is worth. It is whether $70 to $78 in a week, with the lockup schedule attached, beats what a secondary buyer will pay for the same shares today. The table below is that comparison for every class of holder we see.

Every holder's number

All prices are on the post-split count. The 10-for-1 split took effect September 17, so a pre-split $589.01 Series H share is $58.90 and a pre-split $925 print is $92.50. Where a holder's entry is a round price, the gain is to the midpoint of the range, $74.

Three readings.

The round investors are fine and the tender sellers were not wrong. Series H holders mark up by a quarter on a position that is seven months old. The employees who sold into the April tender at $25.91 left two-thirds of the IPO price on the table, but they sold at the Series G price with certainty, eighteen months before their first lockup window, in a year the company told them nothing about a listing. That is what a tender is for.

The summer buyers are roughly flat after costs. A $66.60 average entry is 11% below the midpoint. A direct buyer keeps most of that. A buyer through a single-layer SPV with a 5% placement fee and 10% carry keeps less than half of it, and a double-layer SPV buyer, which is how most of the summer volume moved, is close to even. Those positions were underwritten against $1.5 to $2 trillion, which is $89 to $118 a share. They were not underwritten against $74.

The September buyers paid more than the public will. Two prints at $86.70 on September 24, a week after the split and three weeks before the Q3 numbers, sit 15% above the midpoint. Those buyers have a locked position at a loss unless the stock trades through its range on day one. It might: the book is covered, retail is 20%, and large tech listings have opened above range more often than below it. But the range is the number the company and its banks chose with full information, and it says the secondary market overpaid in September.

What the share count does to the headline

The valuation numbers in circulation disagree because they count different shares. The filing says about 13.09 billion shares will be outstanding after the offering, which puts the range at $916 billion to $1.02 trillion. That is the same company the Series H valued at $965 billion in May, now with another $61 billion of cash on the balance sheet. The $1.4 trillion figure adds options, RSUs, the Class N shares the convertible notes become and the Public Benefit Fund's 5%, all of which dilute a Class A holder over time but are not shares today.

For a secondary holder the per-share price is the only number that matters, and it is unambiguous: $70 to $78. The valuation framing matters for one reason, which is the Public Benefit Fund. It receives another 2% of the company every time the share price rises 50% above the prior milestone, starting from the IPO price. From $74 the first milestone is $111, which is the September draft's valuation. A holder who models the stock reaching the number it was marketed at in September should take 2% off the top when it gets there.

The $26 billion with no lockup

The seven strategic buyers take their Class N at the IPO price with no post-IPO lockup, which is unusual and worth reading carefully. Class N has no vote, and these buyers are compute suppliers who are also customers, so the position is as much a commercial relationship as an investment. They are unlikely sellers in the first weeks. But $26 billion of free-to-trade stock sitting above a locked-up employee and investor base is a supply overhang the lockup schedule did not contemplate, and the first time one of the seven trims, the market will notice.

The practical effect for a locked holder is that the early tranches, 6% at day 27 and 6% at day 48, land in a market where the only large sellers are the company's suppliers and the employees' 10%. That is a thinner float than the headline $64 billion suggests, and it tends to support the price into the first two release dates.

What we are telling holders this week

If you hold Series H or earlier directly, the range is a gain, the lockup is a schedule rather than a cliff, and there is no reason to sell into a secondary bid at a discount to $70 a week before the public will pay it. The desk is seeing bids. They are below the range.

If you bought through an SPV in the summer, your number is the sponsor's net, not the table above. Ask for the carry and fee terms in writing and run them against $74 before deciding whether the SPV's exit timing works for you. Most summer SPVs are locked on the same schedule as their underlying holder, which for a holder above 0.5% can be a year.

If you bought in September, the range is a loss on paper and the first trade will decide whether it stays one. There is no secondary exit at $86.70 today. The decision is whether to hold through day one, and for most of these positions, which are locked, it is not a decision at all.

If you are a buyer, the public market will price Anthropic on November 19 with a 20% retail allocation and a covered book. A secondary purchase this week at any price above $70 is a bet on the first-day pop, with a lockup attached and no liquidity until day 27 at the earliest. At a discount to $70, it is a different trade, and those sellers exist.

We covered the filing in detail: the split, the lockup and the per-share math, what the strategic partners hold and can sell, what the founders hold and are selling, and the Hacker News arguments, checked against the S-1. We will publish the first-day close against this table on November 19.