San Franciscos luxury dealers are salivating at the Anthropic IPO and bracing for tidal wave of cash to hit their coffers

Anthropic filed for its hotly anticipate IPO on Monday — potentially the biggest initial offering in history — and the San Francisco area’s luxury markets are banking on big business from freshly flush AI employees and early investors.“Their budgets are just getting bigger and bigger the longer they’re looking, because simply the valuations of the companies are growing, so they’re able to afford more,” Redfin agent Kelley Krock told The Post.For one buyer at a major AI company, finding the perfect house could wait.

He had money to burn.“I said, I’m not 100% sure this is the house for you, and his response back to me was that it doesn’t matter, he can make it a rental in a year,” Krock recalled.A Redfin analysis in July estimated current and former Anthropic and OpenAI employees’ potential combined after-tax equity at $198 billion — equivalent to 29% of the San Francisco metro’s residential property value.“People are already spending that money that they anticipate getting,” Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economics research, told The Post.“The pre-spending that you tend to see before the event happens tends to be a fraction of what happens after the event.”San Francisco is already one of America’s most expensive places to rent — and residents without AI stock could face an even bigger squeeze.The city’s median asking rent has reached $4,560 a month, roughly $965 more than a year ago, according to Zumper.

“The Anthropic IPO and other IPOs are going to make it even harder,” Sam Moss, executive director of Mission Housing Development Corporation, told ABC7, adding that “most of us can’t afford houses already.”Wealthy buyers in other sectors are trying to beat the Anthropic crowd to the closing table ahead of what Krock anticipates will be a “tidal wave.” “They are very smart and trying to get into a contract now or get into a house now before the quote-unquote flood comes, and things get even more competitive,�...