Anthropic files for potentially the biggest IPO ever even as CEO warns of risk to humanity from AI

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Anthropic, a major artificial intelligence company, filed paperwork on Monday for what could become the biggest first sale of company shares to the public ever. This comes even as its top leader warns that advanced AI could pose a serious threat to humanity's survival.

The filing prepares the San Francisco company to begin trading shares on Wall Street next month. Its offering could be bigger than the record-breaking initial public offering (IPO) by SpaceX in June, which raised $86 billion. Anthropic could also become a publicly traded company before OpenAI, setting up two huge stock market debuts by competing AI companies.

The filing comes weeks after CEO Dario Amodei argued in an essay that the industry should slow the development of its most advanced AI models. An IPO could give Anthropic a huge amount of money to expand faster. It is not yet clear how much money the company will raise, how much it will be worth or what price its shares will sell for. But even lower estimates would make the five-year-old startup one of the world's most valuable companies. The sale could also increase the wealth of Amodei and his sister, co-founder Daniela Amodei, by billions of dollars.

The 335-page filing showed that Anthropic's revenue is growing quickly. However, like many technology companies that go public, it is still losing money. The company behind the Claude chatbot reported a net loss of $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026. In the same period a year earlier, its loss was $13 billion.

Despite these losses, private investors valued Anthropic at $965 billion earlier this year. Reports suggest its value could rise to $1.5 trillion or even $2 trillion, although its final value has not yet been set. If it is valued at $1.5 trillion, Anthropic would be among the world's most valuable publicly traded companies, alongside Tesla.

Reports say the IPO could raise as much as $100 billion. That would beat the current record, set by another company owned by Elon Musk, SpaceX, earlier this year.

In its filing with regulators, Anthropic said its shares would be listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol "ANT."

Many risks, but a huge possible reward for the founders

Anthropic said in its filing that it could use some of the money to buy other companies and technology. It could also invest in the computer systems and other equipment it needs to grow and compete with rivals.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders. It is locked in a battle with OpenAI to lead the AI industry. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are widely seen as bitter rivals.

But the companies face many other competitors, including Google, newer startups in the United States and China, and Musk's SpaceX, which also has an AI business. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX's AI division have all been spending more money than they earn. Building AI systems requires huge amounts of computing power and other resources, raising fears that the industry could be in a bubble.

The IPO would help Anthropic cover any shortage of cash. It could also make the company's seven founders extremely wealthy, including Dario and Daniela Amodei. Together, the founders own nearly 500 million shares. However, the filing does not make clear what share of the company they will own after the IPO.

Forbes estimates that Dario Amodei, 43, and Daniela Amodei, 39, who is Anthropic's president, are each worth $15.5 billion. Forbes ranks them as the 176th and 177th richest people in the world.

The filing also listed many risks for Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco. These include the possibility that it could lose key workers, face problems with government rules or fail to get enough computing power to run its AI systems.

But the most striking warning was that its AI models could "pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity."

Calls to slow down AI development

Anthropic's IPO comes as concerns about AI grow both inside and outside the industry. Reports describe increasingly powerful AI systems that can solve problems beyond human ability. But these systems could also act in unexpected ways and carry out harmful tasks.

In September, Amodei said the AI industry should slow its rapid development so that safety measures have time to catch up. Without a slowdown, he warned, AI could soon create large groups of AI agents that could take over the entire internet within six to 12 months.

In a post on his website, Amodei suggested steps to increase oversight of the AI industry. He said Anthropic was already taking some of these steps itself. But he said other changes would require companies across the industry to work together, along with governments around the world, including governments with authoritarian rule.

"I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong," Amodei wrote.

Disputes with the U.S. government

Anthropic has tried to distinguish itself from other AI companies by presenting itself as a company that puts safety and responsible development first. It says this approach is different from trying to grow at any cost with few safeguards. Part of this view comes from the company's dispute with the U.S. government. The conflict began in February, when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of putting national security at risk and labeled the company a supply chain risk.

In March, Anthropic sued the Pentagon over the label. The company called the government's actions an "unlawful campaign of retaliation" because it had refused to allow unrestricted military use of its technology. The lawsuit made an unusually public fight even more intense over how AI can be used in war and for large-scale surveillance.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, agreed to work with the Pentagon just hours after the government penalized Anthropic for its position. Anthropic also filed a separate, more limited lawsuit over another rule the Pentagon is using in its effort to label the company a supply chain risk.

A judge in California ruled in Anthropic's favor in the first case. In the second case, a judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of the government. Both sides are appealing the decisions.

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Condon reported from New York.