The IPO market appears to have ground to a halt, which could spell trouble for Anthropic.

Smart ring maker Oura announced on Tuesday that it is postponing its IPO, citing the "uncertain IPO market." Before that, metals producer Amaero last week and Holtec Nuclear Corp. the week before both made similar decisions to hold off on listing. In addition, SB Energy, a data center power development company under SoftBank, publicly filed its IPO documents as early as September 1 (two days earlier than Oura), but has yet to launch its roadshow.

The reasons are not hard to understand. Two weeks ago, Holtec cited multiple "headwinds" in its statement explaining the IPO postponement: rising energy costs, trade tensions, military conflicts, and higher interest rates. In short, the complex global environment. Beyond that, the data center supplier also mentioned "unclear prospects for the data center industry."

Admittedly, in the current volatile market environment, companies with riskier business models or excessive valuations will find the path to listing particularly difficult. Oura claimed it had received "strong subscription demand" from investors, but the valuation implied by its proposed price range was nearly twice what would be considered reasonable. On Tuesday, some investors objected on valuation grounds. And as previously reported, many on Wall Street see similarities between Oura and other underperforming single-hardware-product companies.

SB Energy's situation is different, and closer to that of Nscale, which has also filed for a listing. Both companies aspire to become large AI data center operators, but their businesses are still at a very early stage. SB Energy does not even have any operational data centers yet. Nscale's business is not that nascent, but as reported, it must convince investors that it has the ability to raise funds to complete its pending data center projects. A person familiar with the matter said Nscale is still proceeding with its IPO process. Even so, if news emerges soon that Nscale has decided to postpone its listing, it would not be surprising.

The market had originally expected Anthropic to launch an IPO soon, hoping to raise close to $100 billion. So what do these developments mean for Anthropic? The turbulent market environment will add obstacles to that goal. In addition, Anthropic's confidential IPO prospectus, leaked on Monday evening, also highlighted the various risks the company faces. According to reports, Anthropic warned in its filing about the existential risks AI may pose to humanity, while also disclosing its own financial risks in detail.

We have already seen that investors in the debt market are becoming increasingly selective when financing data center and chip projects, and data center expansion is crucial to Anthropic's business growth, which will undoubtedly add resistance to its development. Taken together, the question may no longer be whether Anthropic will postpone its IPO, but when it will.