Prediction market bets set the tone for Anthropic’s much-awaited IPO — SkimNews
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- Anthropic unveiled its IPO filing earlier this week; Reuters reported the listing could value it at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, while the opening bell is likely next month.
- Polymarket spawned more than a dozen Anthropic IPO markets covering fundraising, listing exchange and debut valuation; activity on Polymarket and Kalshi together reached tens of millions of dollars in volume.
- Kalshi attracted wagers on which bank will lead the Anthropic offering and which sector index providers will classify the company in.
- Polymarket logged $6 million in trading on its Anthropic IPO-timing contract as of 9:30 a.m. ET on Oct. 28, while a separate closing-market-cap contract drew about $3 million.
- Prediction markets let traders buy and sell contracts tied to Anthropic’s closing price and listing venue without owning shares, as the platforms expand from politics into tens of thousands of stock and corporate-event markets.
- Cerity Partners partner Michael Ashley Schulman compared the trading rush to people lining up outside an Apple Store for a new iPhone and said the wagers may help the market zero in on Anthropic’s eventual opening price.
- Interactive Brokers chief strategist Steve Sosnick called Anthropic’s IPO a crucial litmus test of retail and institutional appetite for AI, noting that issuers still allocate only a small portion of offerings to individual investors.
Why it matters: Retail traders gain a way to express Anthropic IPO views without buying shares, and Polymarket and Kalshi have already registered tens of millions of dollars in volume. For a listing with a Reuters-reported $1.5 trillion-to-$2 trillion valuation range, those bets offer an early read on opening-price expectations even though institutional investors still dominate allocations.
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