Canadian Investors Face Tighter Hurdles for Anthropic’s Mega-IPO Than SpaceX
Canadian investors hoping to get a piece of Anthropic PBC’s initial public offering will need a little luck, with American underwriters controlling the deal’s order book and final share allocations out of New York.
Unlike SpaceX’s IPO in June, which was designed to sell shares across multiple markets and to allocate a sizable block of stock to retail investors, Anthropic’s lead underwriters are keeping final decisions close to their vests, according to three sources familiar with the offerings.
While it is possible that Canadian investors will get access to Anthropic shares – particularly large institutional investors such as insurers and pension funds – the amounts allocated to investors of all stripes will ultimately depend on total demand, the sources said. In other words, it’s more of a traditional wait-and-see approach.
The Globe and Mail is not naming the sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the transaction.
For a hot IPO that has orders for far more shares than the company plans to sell, the banks tend to allocate shares to the clients that pay the most and with which they have deep relationships. That means hedge funds and pension plans that pay significant commissions to dealers for trades and research are likely to get their orders filled first, while retail investors may only get a small fraction of the shares they requested.
Anthropic started marketing its IPO this week, with hopes of raising as much as US$90-billion. Three Canadian investment banks are serving as underwriters: Royal Bank of Canada, BMO Nesbitt Burns and TD Securities. That means these banks will earn a fee – still to be disclosed – and their clients are likely to have a greater chance of getting access to some shares.
Anthropic has also filed the regulatory paperwork to sell shares to retail investors in Canada beyond these three banks, and some shares may be available to clients of CIBC World Markets, Scotia Capital and Wealthsimple.
However, the deal is also being sold to retail investors in Europe, Japan, Britain and Australia, with multiple institutions, including Robinhood, making the shares available for sale to their clients in these markets.
Elon Musk took a different tack in the record-setting IPO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, by trying to get as much stock as possible into the hands of individual investors. In an unusual move for a foreign company staging a highly anticipated IPO, its bankers set aside an allocation of stock for retail investors, and a Canadian sales team was set up to help sell the shares.
One of the three sources, who is a Canadian banker and worked on the SpaceX offering, described Mr. Musk, as “messianic” in his desire to build a following for the company by selling the IPO to as many shareholders as possible.
SpaceX raised a total of US$85.7-billion when it went public. Ultimately, 10 per cent of the IPO was allocated to global investors, and retail buyers were given 20 per cent of the shares, according to one of the sources, who is familiar with the sales breakdown.
In Anthropic’s case, Canadian banks are soliciting orders through their New York sales desks. They then inform lead underwriter Goldman Sachs of the demand, and Goldman ultimately decides how shares are distributed.
There is also another key difference between the two IPOs: Anthropic loses substantially more money than SpaceX.
Anthropic’s IPO prospectus shows the company’s revenue has soared over the last three years, rising from US$41-million in 2023 to US$33-billion in the first nine months of 2026, but its losses have also jumped exponentially. The company lost US$1.5-billion in 2023 and US$104-billion in the first nine months of 2026 – though the majority of this loss is an accounting charge tied to money the company borrowed.
In SpaceX’s case, the company lost US$4.9-billion in 2025 and made US$791-million in 2024, and there are also multiple revenue streams. The company has an artificial intelligence division, which drives the bulk of its losses, but it also has a “connectivity” arm for low-earth-orbit satellites that made US$4.4-billion in income from operations in 2025.
Anthropic, meanwhile, is solely focused on AI and the company’s “pay-for-intelligence” model is its main source of revenue. That means Anthropic charges for access to its family of four Claude models, each with a different level of sophistication.
Anthropic is looking to sell 825 million shares at a range of US$70 to US$78 per share, with the IPO slated to price Nov. 18.
With reports from Jameson Berkow
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
