Anthropic IPO: New York Angels' Peck Backs $1.5 Trillion Pricing

Peck's Case for a $1.5 Trillion Print

Bob Peck, a board member at New York Angels, says Anthropic's initial public offering could act as a catalyst for the broader technology sector, with large investors reportedly pushing for the company to price at the low end of a $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion range. Speaking on CNBC's Squawk on the Street, Peck argued the final price would become a yardstick for hyperscalers and cloud giants valued between $2 trillion and $4 trillion. His comments land after a bruising stretch for mega-cap technology. The group's view arrives amid a wider repricing debate, one in which private AI valuations have climbed while public markets have begun questioning whether revenue can keep pace with spending. Alphabet's stock fell more than 12% on Oct. 29, its worst single day on record and a loss of roughly $500 billion in value, a slide Peck tied to weak AI monetization. He linked Intel's weakness to softer PC demand and Apple's to margin pressure, adding that sentiment across tech sits slightly more cautious than it did six months ago. Peck's valuation math draws partly on analyst estimates for xAI, the AI arm SpaceX absorbed in February, which gives him one of his reference points for what AI platforms should be worth. “I think the valuation numbers make sense based on the back of the envelope math you've seen me do,” he said. The timing matters as well: a print at the low end would land below the top of the book at a moment when public markets lack a direct read on what private AI valuations are worth.

COINOTAG data on the pre-IPO Anthropic instrument shows the last price at $1,654.19, up 1.48% over 24 hours and inside a $1,589.00 to $1,711.60 range. The nearest resistance sits at $1,701.51, which scores 96 out of 100 on COINOTAG's composite, while support at $1,594.06 carries a score of 91/100. Momentum readings stay weak: the daily RSI stands at 29.7, the MACD signal is bearish and the daily trend reads as a downtrend. In derivatives, the perpetual funding rate prints 0.0025% per interval and open interest holds near $87 million. Price now sits below the $1,701.51 resistance band, with the $1,594.06 support shelf not far underneath.

The S-1 Filing's Retention Math

Anthropic's amended S-1 registration statement feeds the other side of the argument. The filing reports net revenue retention of roughly 900%, a measure of how much existing customers spent over the past year relative to the year before, a figure far above enterprise software peers Palantir at 157% and Snowflake at 126%. Retention at that level implies big customers are expanding spending rapidly, which is what bulls point to when defending a rich multiple. PitchBook senior analyst Harrison Rolfes expects the 900% number to shrink quickly as it comes off a small base, meaning each new cohort of customers flatters the ratio before it normalizes. The historical record is unforgiving too. Jay Ritter, who directs the University of Florida's IPO Initiative, counts only 14 offerings out of 4,110 priced between 1980 and 2024 that sold above 40 times trailing sales, and buyers of those 14 at the offer price trailed the broader market by an average 15.4% within three years. At $1.5 trillion, Anthropic would trade near 43 times trailing sales, squarely inside that rare cohort and among the most expensive listings ever by this measure. The amended filing also shows compute costs outpaced revenue in the third quarter, rising 77% against 47% revenue growth, a gap that pushes profitability further out the longer it persists. OpenAI, which Peck expects to list in 2027, has already trimmed its funding target to $20 billion from $30 billion, so the price Anthropic settles on may set the reference point for every AI listing queued behind it.

A Reference Price for the Next AI Listings

The two strands of this story converge on one question: whether a number in the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion range can survive 43-times-sales math and a 77% jump in third-quarter compute costs. Peck's endorsement matters because hyperscalers and cloud providers are waiting for a public benchmark to price AI exposure, and Alphabet's record one-day loss showed how quickly sentiment re-prices when monetization disappoints. A low-end print would hand the filings behind Anthropic, OpenAI's among them, a conservative anchor. A stretch toward the top of the range would invite the same history lesson Ritter's dataset documents.