There were no rockets decking Wall Street bank lobbies this past week, unlike the spectacle surrounding SpaceX's blockbuster June listing.

Instead, bankers marketing Anthropic's (ANTH.PVT) potentially record-breaking initial public offering this week faced an unusually turbulent backdrop as Treasury yields surged and a widespread Microsoft Outlook outage hampered communications, all during — the biggest disruption of all — the sudden ousting of Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, whose company is among Anthropic's biggest investors and chip suppliers.

At a JPMorgan Chase investor event Friday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei outlined a future in which AI could help make diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's relics of the past, while devising entirely new markets in scientific research, robotics, and cybersecurity.

"We can have a much more beautiful world ... It sounds starry-eyed. It sounds crazy. I really do believe it," Amodei told JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

Yet Amodei struck a more restrained tone about the company's move to go public, saying he hopes the company will "underpromise and overdeliver."

"We're not super fussed on when exactly, what month or what day or what market conditions we go public into," he added.

FILE PHOTO: CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei, addresses the gathering at the AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi, India, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Bhawika Chhabra/File Photo · Reuters / REUTERS

The comments come as Anthropic seeks a valuation of approximately $1.3 trillion to $1.4 trillion, below the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion figures investors had contemplated just weeks earlier.

The offering, expected to begin trading on Thursday, Nov. 19, could provide one of the clearest tests yet of investors' appetite for AI at a moment when enthusiasm for the broader trade is showing signs of cracks.

The contrast between Anthropic's lofty ambitions and Amodei's measured approach to the IPO has also been apparent in Wall Street's marketing campaign.

The lobbies of JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have been decorated to welcome the startup, according to people familiar with the arrangements. But the displays are more subdued than the digital displays and skyscraper illuminations of rocket ships Wall Street bank visitors witnessed during SpaceX's June IPO, or the meteorite exhibit at JPMorgan's Manhattan headquarters.

Banks are nevertheless mounting a substantial effort to attract investors.

At Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two banks leading the offering, Anthropic executives met with institutional investors earlier this week. Goldman is also planning an event next week for wealth management clients, where the bank's president, John Waldron, is expected to interview Anthropic president Daniela Amodei and CFO Krishna Rao, according to a people familiar with the plans.