Anthropic Builds Its War Chest Ahead of IPO

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News. Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart of Silicon Valley with Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.

**Lisa Mateo** (0:23)
Coming up, Anthropic set to finalize an expansion of its revolving credit facility to $15 billion before its public filing will have those details. Plus a strong US job support, but not so much for tech, with the IT sector shutting 23,000 jobs in August. We'll dig into those numbers. And Apple kicking off the John Ternus era with what could be the biggest run of the new devices in its history.
This is Bloomberg Tech. I'm Lisa Mateo in for Ed Ludlow. Let's get a check of the markets. Look at the five day NASDAQ and pretty flat on the day. It's been a quiet trading day. We're heading into a holiday weekend, so pretty sleepy right now. We'll get to today's big number, and that is 15 billion. That is the size of the revolving credit facility. Anthropic is set to finalize. That's according to Bloomberg sources. All ahead of the firm's public filing for its highly anticipated IPO. So let's get more with Bloomberg's Bailey Lipschel, who kind of broke this story.
Bailey, so how does this help kind of clear the path for the firm's IPO? What's the significance of this?

**Bailey Lipschultz** (1:25)
Yeah, the reason it matters, Lisa, sets the table for these other banks to kind of come in under the tent, if you will, and see what Anthropics numbers look like. So the expectation is this deal did close this morning. So that would mean the likes of Barclays, Wells Fargo, some of the other banks outside of the big three will now be a part of this process. That means that going forward now, this could tee up an analyst day. This could set the stage for kind of public flip early next week or sometime next week that would kick start that 15 day waiting period for the formal marketing to start.

**Lisa Mateo** (1:56)
Now you mentioned some few banks. So generally, syndicated loans, the higher the commitment of a bank, it's the higher the fees it gets paid by the borrower. So that's why this is important.

**Bailey Lipschultz** (2:03)
Well, it's important too because normally your position on the revolver looks pretty darn similar to your position on the IPO. So if you're Morgan Stanley who led this process, the expectation is you would then turn around and lead the IPO process. It's seen as a big win for the likes of a Barclays or Wells Fargo because they're on that top line of the revolver. What that would then indicate is they should be higher on the IPO, which then to that point means better fees from that sale, from the first time share sale and the expectation that this is a company that's going to sell stock and debt in the future.

**Lisa Mateo** (2:33)
Okay. I got to ask you because you cover SpaceX IPO very closely. Is Anthropic, are they looking to raise as much as SpaceX or even more?

**Bailey Lipschultz** (2:41)
At least at what SpaceX. SpaceX or higher has been kind of the verbiage coming from the banks. So that would mean pre-green issue, $75 billion, closer to $82 billion from the IPO. But when we talk to some folks on the street, that number could get a lot higher pretty quickly just given the excitement and the view that Anthropic is seen as a true must-own company, whereas SpaceX had its tits and tats.

**Lisa Mateo** (3:03)
It did. Okay. Any update on the Anthropic IPO? You're following it. When are we going to see this?

**Bailey Lipschultz** (3:08)
I think the expectation from talking to sources, they still need to schedule that analyst day. You do need to then have the banks working on this, have their analysts be able to formulate their models, which would then mean public flips sometime next week. So we're realistically looking at Anthropic pricing its IPO at the earliest, the last day or two of September, but most likely sometime in early October.

**Lisa Mateo** (3:27)
Okay. You're going to be keeping on top of it.

**Bailey Lipschultz** (3:28)
I'll be on top of it. I'll be stuck at my desk, Lisa, checking on every little update.

**Lisa Mateo** (3:34)
All right. I'll send you some food. Thank you, Bailey, very much. It's Bailey Lipschultz.
Thanks for joining us. All right. So with more on the Anthropic and the IPO landscape, RayMaker Securities' co-founder and managing director, Greg Martin, he joins us now. Greg, I have to ask you, so set the scene, before we dig into Anthropic, set the scene. What does the IPO landscape look like right now?