Anthropic Files For IPO Ahead Of Opening Bell On Monday (Live Updates)
Anthropic Officially Files For IPO—Here’s What To Know
By Fiona Riley, Fellow.
Topline
Anthropic filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) before the stock market opened on Monday. This brings the company, which makes Claude, closer to becoming a publicly traded company. Its stock market debut could be one of the biggest in history.
Key Facts
Anthropic secretly filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June. It plans to trade under the stock symbol “ANT” and is on track to go public as early as mid-November.
The filing did not say how much Anthropic hopes the company will be worth or how many shares it plans to sell.
The filing shows that Anthropic earned about $16.3 billion in revenue during the first half of the year, up from $1.2 billion during the same period a year earlier. However, it also reported a net loss of $80.7 billion for the first half of the year.
According to the filing, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the IPO.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Anthropic plans to go public during the week of November 16. It could raise $100 billion or more, giving the company a value of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion.
HOW ANTHROPIC THINKS AI COULD BE USED WITH “INCREDIBLE POTENTIAL”
Anthropic's filing explains that the company wants investors to understand both the possible benefits of AI and the risks it could bring. It describes four main ways AI could help: improving biology and medicine, growing the economy, giving more people access to important benefits, and improving government services. In health care, Anthropic believes AI could potentially help cure cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, rare genetic diseases, and major infectious diseases. The filing says Claude has already begun making discoveries in biology, including finding a molecular machine that might be used for gene editing. To help the economy grow, Anthropic believes AI could reverse the slow growth in productivity seen in advanced economies by making existing work more efficient and finding new ways to get things done. The company also believes AI could increase economic growth around the world and help bring medicine and services to communities that lack important health care. Better data and access to a wider range of knowledge could help make this possible. Finally, Anthropic believes AI could greatly improve tax services, social services, medical services, and the planning and approval processes run by governments. The company plans to keep working with governments to make these processes more efficient. These goals are largely similar to those described by Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei in his important October 2024 essay, “Machines of Loving Grace.” In it, he wrote that five areas of AI—biology and physical health, neuroscience and mental health, economic development and poverty, peace and government, and work and meaning—have “the greatest potential to directly improve the quality of human life.”
WHERE ANTHROPIC THINKS AI POSES THE GREATEST RISKS
“Anything so powerful can be used for ill as well as good,” the filing says. It describes four broad risks: people could use AI to cause harm, AI could act on its own, authoritarian governments could misuse it, and it could cause major economic disruption. To address the risk of harmful use, Anthropic says it has “guardrails and trusted access programs that are designed to block misuse of our technology while still enabling positive applications.” The company also warned that AI acting independently could become “a global security threat of the first order.” Authoritarian governments could use AI to build advanced surveillance systems, increase repression, and strengthen their control. Anthropic also says it will study the economic disruption AI may cause. It has already promised $200 million to work with governments on studies that could help them prepare possible responses.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“We believe that AI is one of the most consequential technologies in human history. If managed well, it could rapidly accelerate scientific innovation, greatly increase economic growth rates, bring cures for major diseases within reach, and solve problems that have resisted generations of human effort,” the filing says. It adds, “Anthropic aims to realize these benefits while navigating and preventing the risks that come with a technological revolution this fast and this powerful.”
KEY BACKGROUND
A group of former OpenAI employees founded Anthropic in 2021. One of them was Dario Amodei, who is now its CEO. The company created Claude, a group of AI models that compete with products such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Amazon, Google, and Nvidia have invested billions of dollars in Anthropic. This money has helped the company pay for chips, data centers, and other work needed to develop and sell its AI technology. The company reported its third-quarter earnings in October, with revenue rising 45% to $16.8 billion for the quarter. It has promised to spend $518 billion over ten years on cloud services, computing power, and infrastructure. In the first half of the year, it reported spending nearly $9 billion on computing power and infrastructure, compared with $2.3 billion during the same period a year earlier.
TANGENT
Anthropic is planning its IPO at a time when investors are becoming more worried about whether the money being spent on AI will produce enough returns. The latest concerns followed earnings reports from Meta and Tesla. Their spending plans, which showed high capital spending at Meta and low capital spending at Tesla, helped trigger another drop in AI-related stocks on Thursday. These worries, along with rising interest rates, are making conditions difficult for many technology and semiconductor companies. They have also influenced other AI companies, including Switch and Nscale, to delay their IPOs until later this year, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
SURPRISING FACT
Anthropic is committing at least 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund after it goes public. The Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, which needs stockholders' approval, is intended to give the company “increased flexibility and scale” in making donations to nonprofit groups or giving money directly to specific groups of people. The fund will not make political donations or pay for lobbying. Hours after Anthropic made its announcement, Elon Musk said he would give every child in America one SpaceX share next year.
FORBES VALUATION
Before the stock market opened on Monday, Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei was estimated to be worth $15.5 billion. This placed him at No. 177 on Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires list. Daniela Amodei, the company's co-founder and president, shared the No. 177 position, with an estimated net worth of $15.5 billion.
FURTHER READING
Anthropic Pledges 5% Of Its Shares To Public Benefit Fund—Here’s How It Works (Forbes)