Anthropic's S-1 leaves out Sequoia, Menlo and Lightspeed, and Sequoia's SpaceX case leans on Anthropic

AnthropicPVT$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B amended its IPO filing on November 2↗ and the numbers landed as advertised: $16.8 billion of third-quarter revenue, an operating loss of $567 million, and about $895 billion of committed spending, $70 billion of it due before September 2027 ²³. The offering is expected to price before US Thanksgiving at a reported $1.5 to $2 trillion valuation, which would beat SpaceX's▲+3.55% — SpaceX, up 3.55 percent today June record ².

But the strangest fact in the largest IPO ever planned is a hole, not a figure. Press coverage of the prospectus names Sequoia Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed and ICONIQ as backers, and the filing itself leaves all four out↗ ⁹. The only venture firm it discloses is Spark Capital, which has invested $777 million across six rounds since leading a $450 million financing at a $4.5 billion valuation in May 2023, and whose partner Yasmin Razavi holds the only venture seat on the board ¹⁸⁹.

So the stake that prices first in public is one the prospectus does not describe. That matters because the revenue behind the filing is real and still compounding: $386 million for all of 2024 became $17 billion in the third quarter of 2026 alone ¹².

Sequoia's two marks share one customer

Here is the arithmetic that never appears in either document. Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire built the public bull case for SpaceX, projecting revenue reaching $731 billion by 2028↗, more than double Wall Street's estimate, and calling Amazon▲+2.07% — Amazon, up 2.07 percent today, Google and Microsoft▲+2.67% — Microsoft, up 2.67 percent today "absolute jokes" at building in the physical world ⁷. Yet one customer, Anthropic, supplied about a third of SpaceX's third-quarter revenue ⁷.

Anthropic's own filing discloses a commitment of up to $120.5 billion with SpaceX↗ that either side can cancel on 90 days' notice once the noncancelable periods end in January and March 2027 ¹⁷. A Sequoia limited partner is marking one AI company twice, and the two marks move together.

Retail is fighting for the other side of the same trade. Robinhood's▲+1.47% — Robinhood, up 1.47 percent today CFO called the contest for Anthropic allocations "a food fight"↗ and argues retail, already a fifth or more of daily equity volume, deserves a slice to match; SpaceX set the precedent at 15 to 20 percent ⁴⁵. SpaceX also handed back a fifth of its post-IPO peak within a week ³. Whoever wins that argument is setting the price at which this boom's private paper becomes public.

What the buyer of the IPO is actually buying

I am firmly pro-AI, and the strongest evidence in this filing is that Anthropic's operating cash flow turned positive at $3.93 billion in the first half of 2026 ¹. The judgment for investors is narrower. Strip away the non-cash loss, which is mostly accounting charges tied to Anthropic's rising valuation, and what remains is a company spending real money to secure compute it cannot yet guarantee ².

October's venture totals tell the same story. $59 billion was raised globally↗, two-thirds of it into AI-driven companies, and seven companies took more than 40 percent of it, while the US IPO market sat idle waiting for this listing ⁶. Anthropic is where that concentration meets public pricing, and the prospectus does not even show you the table of who already won.

The one name it shows, Spark, backed the company when most venture firms would not, and earned a board seat for it ⁸⁹. That, not the revenue chart, is the part of the deal to study: at pricing, the question is who takes allocation, and whether a Sequoia limited partner should still hold SpaceX into a customer about to set its own public price.