On Friday afternoon, on the 56th floor of JPMorgan’s headquarters, Jamie Dimon interviewed perhaps the most important man to Wall Street right now: Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic.
With less than one week before Anthropic plans to sell its shares on the open market, both men projected calm and confidence heading into what could be the largest initial public offering ever.
“We’re not super fussed on when exactly, what month, or what day, or what market conditions we go public into,” Dr. Amodei said, speaking on a small stage as thick clouds enveloped the New York skyline behind him.
Dr. Amodei’s nonchalance, though, belies the intensity of Wall Street’s efforts to sell Anthropic to investors. The company has lined up 22 banks, led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to run its “roadshow,” a series of meetings and presentations, where investors hear about the company’s financials.
Anthropic disclosed earlier this week it aimed to raise up to $100 billion at a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion, down from $2 trillion bankers had floated this summer, before market jitters appeared.
JPMorgan and Citi are stewarding efforts to sell to individual investors, which Anthropic has said it expects to make up about 20 percent of the offering. Another critical group of investors: Seven of the tech industry’s biggest players, including Broadcom, Nvidia and Microsoft, which have already signed up to invest a total of $26 billion in Anthropic immediately after listing.
Each of those seven technology firms also stands to benefit from a successful Anthropic listing: Some, like Nvidia, Google and Microsoft, were already investors. All of them count Anthropic as a customer, and a successful Anthropic offering means a sustainable buyer of their services.
And the banks themselves could stand to collect roughly $400 million in fees on the deal, according to analysts at Evercore.
Anthropic is entering a market that has been less than ideal. Concerns about debt-fueled spending on artificial intelligence have whipsawed stock and bond prices for weeks. This week’s shocking resignation of Jensen Huang as Nvidia’s chief executive added more turmoil and uncertainty.
“Everyone has an interest in making this a success,” said Craig Coben, a former global head of equity capital markets at Bank of America, describing Anthropic’s offering as “too crucial to fail.”
“So far the market thinks the A.I. ecosystem can withstand Huang’s resignation,” Mr. Coben said, “but it’s still processing in real time what it all means for future spend and investment.”
Throughout its roadshow, Anthropic’s messaging has been that it will try to control its own destiny. In private meetings in New York conference rooms and on video calls, executives have stressed to investors that the company will rise above the fray by using a new cash pile from the I.P.O. to develop its own chips and build their own data centers.
They’re also selling what is, for now, a dream. Dr. Amodei has spent significant time in meetings on a subject without much traction yet: the company’s early forays into helping to develop new drugs and automate science laboratories, two investors said.
Anthropic, and its advisers, have taken a notably more austere approach than Elon Musk’s SpaceX public offering in June, a reflection in part of Dr. Amodei’s more understated style.
Mr. Musk’s roadshow video that opened with orchestral music, a snapshot of the moon, and reference to Mr. Musk’s goal to “change mankind and make us a multi-planetary species.”
In Anthropic’s promotional video, Dr. Amodei, sporting a teal sweater that went with the earthy colors of his office backdrop, warns within the first few minutes of the potential of artificial intelligence to “make a bioweapon or do a cyberattack.” (Dr. Amodei did call artificial intelligence “the most promising technology in human history” and closed the video by saying he thought A.I. would help end cancer and mental illness within a decade.)
For SpaceX’s I.P.O., which at the time was the largest on record, banks erected rocket ships in their lobbies and served space-themed food in their cafeterias to mark the first day of trading. During Friday’s roadshow event at JPMorgan, the bank handed out leather laptop cases and cookies that simply said “Anthropic.”
Some invisible Wall Street forces are working in Anthropic’s favor.
Because of its sizable valuation and new rules allowing large I.P.O.s to enter major stock indexes more quickly, the company will benefit from billions of dollars from passive index funds and exchange-traded funds that will automatically buy its shares in its early weeks of trading. That creates a can’t-miss feeling among investors who actively manage money and want to keep pace with the broader market.
Until now, Anthropic’s growth has also seeped into investors’ stock portfolios in more indirect ways. The A.I. company’s announcements have at times sent software stocks tumbling, for instance.
“It’s a must own because it’s a hedge against your existing portfolio,” said Jeremy Abelson, founder of Irving Investors, which buys private and public tech stocks.
Dr. Amodei isn’t a brand-new face for many large tech investors. The company raised more than $140 billion privately, including from some of the largest mutual funds, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, much of it just this year.
Michael Paulus, founder of PCM Encore, a wealth management firm, compared the Anthropic I.P.O. to a promising early-stage start-up investment, on a much a grander scale.
“In the next 10 years, will Anthropic at some point trade down 70 percent, probably?” he said. “Could it be worth 10 times what it’s worth today? It’s also probably true.”
On Tuesday, Morgan Stanley hosted a meeting for investors with Anthropic’s chief financial officer, Krishna Rao. Next week, Mr. Rao and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic’s president and Mr. Amodei’s sister, will meet with investors at Goldman Sachs.
After his talk with Mr. Dimon on Friday, Mary Erdoes, who leads the bank’s asset and wealth management business, reiterated to the room what she deemed a key part of Dr. Amodei’s message.
“The goal is to under promise and to over deliver,” Ms. Erdoes said. “And we sure hope you do that.”
