This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) shares gained 1.08% to $269.05 at 9:35 a.m. ET in early regular-session trading on November 12 as investors priced Amazon's position in Anthropic ahead of next week's IPO. Reuters valued the stake at about $271.8 billion at $78 a share against $18.0 billion invested, according to CoinCentral.
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The structure matters. Amazon faces a 12% ownership cap under its notes, so its shares arrive in stages: it will hold 1,920,511,218 Class N shares after the offering, with 1,563,617,444 more to be issued later, CoinCentral reported. Anthropic's amended S-1 sets an 825 million-share offering at $70 to $78 and shows revenue of $17.0 billion for the three months ended September 30, 2026.
Holders of more than 0.5% of fully diluted shares face lock-ups of up to 365 days.
At $271.8 billion, the stake equals about 9.3% of Amazon's $2.91 trillion market value, a meaningful hidden asset that turns visible next week. It is still paper value: long lock-ups and staged issuance mean Amazon cannot realize it quickly, and mark-to-market swings could add volatility to reported earnings. GuruFocus gives Amazon a GF Score of 94/100, with an 8/10 profitability rank and 7/10 financial strength.
At $269.05, the shares sit 3.9% above the GF Value of $259.07, a "Fairly Valued" reading, at about 21.8 times earnings. The test is the November 18 pricing and whether AWS keeps winning Anthropic's compute spending after the listing.
