Anthropic's IPO gives investors new insight into the company
Anthropic, an artificial intelligence start-up based in San Francisco that created the popular Claude AI models, announced on Monday, Oct. 26, that it had filed paperwork to prepare for its initial public offering (IPO). The stock sale is expected to be one of the largest ever to launch.
Investors believe the company could be worth nearly $1.5 trillion or as much as $2 trillion. Its shares could begin trading on Wall Street as soon as next month. Investors believe the IPO could be bigger than Elon Musk's SpaceX stock listing in June, which raised about $86 billion and valued the company at about $2 trillion.
The company's final value has not yet been decided, and the filing does not say what its shares will initially cost. The document says the company will trade under the stock symbol "ANT."
In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Anthropic's leaders explain their plans for the future. They say their AI models could "revolutionize," or greatly change, many areas of human activity, including the economy, science and medicine.
"We believe the diffusion of AI through the global economy represents one of the largest opportunities in history to improve how humans live and work, and it is just beginning," Anthropic says in its Form S-1 registration statement.
"In our view, the world has only begun to use the capabilities of today's frontier models, and the gap between what Claude can do and how broadly it is used represents one of our largest growth opportunities, alongside continued advances at the frontier."
The filing shows that the five-year-old company, founded by former OpenAI employees, has grown its revenue quickly. Its revenue reached nearly $5 billion between 2023 and 2025. The company also said it earned $16.3 billion in revenue during the first six months of 2026. It described this as "a year-over-year growth rate of 1,300%," meaning revenue was 1,300% higher than in the same period a year earlier.
However, Anthropic warned investors not to expect revenue to keep growing at that rate. It said much of the increase came from "early-stage adoption dynamics, the nascency of the AI market, and rapid initial customer expansion." In other words, AI is still a new market, and the company has been gaining customers quickly as more people begin using its products.
"We expect our revenue growth rate to decline over time. In addition, because the AI industry is very nascent, we have struggled to accurately forecast our revenue in the past and may struggle to do so in the future," the filing says.
The filing also shows that Anthropic has not made a profit, even though it has earned billions of dollars. The company has spent large amounts on investments, finances and resources. Despite reporting record revenue in the first six months of 2026, it reported a net loss of $80.7 billion during the same period.
"While we have experienced significant revenue growth in recent periods, our business is highly capital intensive, and our ability to remain at the frontier of AI capabilities and secure sufficient compute depends in meaningful part on our ability to generate and sustain substantial revenue and improve our operating efficiencies," the filing says. This means the company needs a lot of money and computing power to keep building advanced AI systems, and it must bring in enough revenue while making its operations more efficient.
"Further, our revenue growth may not be sustainable, and our rate of growth may decrease. We expect our costs will increase over time and our losses will continue as we expect to invest significant resources towards growing our business and operating as a public company."
Anthropic points to possible barriers to future growth
Anthropic also said it has signed contracts with major technology companies that require it to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over several years. These commitments could make it harder for the company to start making a profit in the near future.
Earlier this year, Anthropic signed agreements with Google for cloud computing services and a large investment in the company. Under the agreements, Anthropic committed to spending at least $114.5 billion on Google's services between April 2026 and July 2033. It also signed a similar agreement with Amazon, agreeing to spend at least $110.0 billion between May 2026 and April 2036.
The company also said investors should expect no dividend payments. "As we have never declared or paid any dividends and have no current plans to do so," the filing says. Dividends are payments that a company may give to its shareholders.
Anthropic warned that future growth could also slow as lawmakers push for new rules governing artificial intelligence. Such rules could limit how the company develops its products or how freely it operates.
Some states have already shown plans to oversee AI systems. In September 2026, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a wide-ranging executive order aimed at advancing the possibility of creating an emergency AI "kill switch" that could shut down an AI system.
This announcement also comes at a time when many people have negative views about artificial intelligence. Some have pointed to a series of posts by Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee, who warned about the potential threat AI could pose to humanity.
"They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives," he said. "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt … No other human activity poses this level of danger."
To address these concerns, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on AI companies to slow the pace at which they improve their models. He also outlined a three-step plan to slow development and give people more time to manage the risks.
Anthropic's filing also discusses public concerns in a section about risks to the company. This section is almost 100 pages long and includes the possibility that its technology could be "catastrophic" for humanity.
The section on risks runs from page 26 to page 119, covering 93 pages of possible dangers. For comparison, SpaceX's risk section covered 37 pages, Microsoft's covered 40 pages, and Coinbase's covered 60 pages.
USA TODAY reporter Greta Reich contributed to this article.
Noe Padilla is a Northern California Reporter for USA Today. Contact him at [email protected], follow him on X @1NoePadilla or on Bluesky at @noepadilla.bsky.social. Sign up for the TODAY Californian newsletter or follow us on Facebook at TODAY Californian.