Anthropic IPO could draw record retail buying, Vanda Research says

Anthropic could see record buying by retail investors in its market debut, potentially surpassing SpaceX and making it one of the biggest single-day retail purchases in history, Vanda Research said in a note on Wednesday.

The research firm expects Anthropic's debut to attract about $250 million in net retail buying, based on its analysis of retail activity on listing days and the volume of its pre-IPO perpetual futures traded on Hyperliquid. This would be twice SpaceX's IPO record of $118 million in retail buying.

"Judging by pre-IPO perp trading, Anthropic is shaping up to be a record retail IPO," Viraj Patel, global macro strategist at Vanda Research said, in the note.


Pre-IPO perpetual futures are a type of derivative contract which trade on exchanges like Hyperliquid and Coinbase, and allow traders to bet on private companies' valuation. They have no direct link to the underlying shares but are priced with reference to the company's latest disclosed pre-IPO valuation.

Only six stocks have topped $250 million in single-day retail buying since 2024, the data firm added.

"Anthropic next week could draw the kind of retail buying that we've rarely seen in our data," Vanda said.

Anthropic is targeting a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion in its IPO, with shares expected to start trading on the Nasdaq on November 19.