Anthropic’s IPO filing shows explosive growth, risks and staggering costs
Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has filed for what could be the biggest ever initial public offering, potentially eclipsing SpaceX's $86 billion record, even as its CEO warns AI poses an existential threat to humanity.
The filing on Monday sets up the five-year-old startup for a Wall Street debut potentially before Thanksgiving in the US, late next month. The move comes weeks after CEO Dario Amodei argued in an essay for slowing the development of the most advanced AI models, creating a paradox as the IPO could provide Anthropic with enormous resources to accelerate its expansion.
The prospectus highlights the AI company's rapid growth over the past year, fueled by Big Tech's breakneck spending that has driven a rally in AI stocks, while raising concerns about lofty valuations and rising debt. The company's revenue grew a staggering 1,368 percent in the three months ended June 30 from a year ago.
Staggering Losses
Anthropic's net loss in the first half of 2026 widened sharply to $80.7bn, largely due to a rise in the fair value of bonds convertible into the company's shares. Revenue in the period was about $16.3bn. The company warned in the prospectus that the revenue growth rate could decline over time and fluctuate occasionally.
Some current and prospective investors are valuing Anthropic at about $1.5 trillion, down from roughly $2 trillion a week ago, after the AI startup disclosed some financial details at a recent investor event, Reuters reported.
AI Risks Highlighted
The prospectus details the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI, from potential misuse and security threats to concerns that advanced systems could produce outputs that "could be interpreted as coercive, deceptive, or manipulative." Anthropic's own research raises concerns about advanced AI systems, which in controlled tests have shown behaviors including code sabotage, fraud assistance and information manipulation.
Our increasing use of AI systems to accelerate our own research and development may cause the capabilities of our models to advance more rapidly than our ability to develop, validate and implement corresponding safety, alignment and security measures.
Market Context
The IPO push comes despite a once-busy autumn listing calendar thinning out as choppy markets prompt companies to delay their offerings. Growing investor unease with the debt-fuelled AI investment boom has led to a global selloff in AI and tech stocks, as they start to doubt whether the trillions spent on data centres, chips and computing capacity will generate fast returns.
Anthropic said that more than half of Fortune 500 companies and over 30 percent of Global 2000 firms were customers generating at least $100,000 each in revenue for the company over the 12 months ended September 30. Founded in 2021, Anthropic was valued at $965bn in May in a funding round that drew some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
The company will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "ANT" after the IPO closes. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were named as the lead banks for the IPO alongside 20 others as underwriters. Morgan Stanley will act as a stabilisation agent, overseeing the stock's early trading.
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