Anthropic files for potentially the biggest IPO ever as CEO warns of risk to humanity from AI
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. Business Journal composite using a TechCrunch photo / CC BY 2.0.
(AP) — Anthropic, a major artificial intelligence company, filed paperwork on Monday for what could be the biggest stock market debut ever. At the same time, its CEO has warned that advanced AI could threaten the future of humanity.
The filing prepares the San Francisco company to start selling shares on Wall Street next month. Its offering could be bigger than SpaceX's stock market debut in June, which raised a record $86 billion. Anthropic could also go public before OpenAI, setting up two huge stock market launches by rival AI companies.
An initial public offering (IPO) could give Anthropic a huge amount of money to speed up its growth. It is still unclear how much money the company will raise, how much the company will be worth and how much its shares will cost. But even lower estimates would make the five-year-old startup one of the world's most valuable companies. The IPO could also increase the wealth of CEO Dario Amodei and his sister, co-founder Daniela Amodei, by billions of dollars.
The 335-page filing showed that Anthropic's revenue is growing quickly. It earned more than $16 billion in the first half of the year, 14 times as much as in the same period last year. But, like many other technology companies that go public, the company behind the Claude chatbot has not yet made a profit.
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 been set. If valued at $1.5 trillion, Anthropic would rank among the world's most valuable publicly traded companies, alongside Tesla.
Reports say the IPO could raise as much as $100 billion, beating the record set by SpaceX.
In its filing with regulators, Anthropic said it plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the stock symbol “ANT.”
Anthropic plans to go public in an uncertain market
In its filing, the company said it might use some of the money to buy other companies and technology. It may also invest in the computer systems and other resources it needs to grow and compete with rivals.
Former OpenAI leaders founded Anthropic in 2021. The company 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.
Both companies face many other competitors, including Google, newer startups in the United States and China, and SpaceX, which also has an AI business. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX's AI division have all been spending more money than they earn because building AI requires huge amounts of resources. This has raised fears that the AI industry may be in a bubble, where company values rise beyond what their businesses can support.
The need for cash may explain why Anthropic is moving quickly to sell shares to the public this year instead of waiting until next year, as OpenAI plans to do. Another concern is that demand for AI stocks could fall sharply or even collapse.
Investors have grown worried about how much money AI companies need. Several technology companies have recently dropped their plans to go public.
The IPO would help Anthropic cover its costs and could also make its seven founders extremely wealthy, including Dario and Daniela Amodei. The filing did not directly state how much of the company the founders own. However, other figures in the document suggest that each founder will own 1.4% of the company. If Anthropic goes public at the highest expected value, each founder's stake could be worth as much as $28 billion.
Many risks, but huge potential rewards for the founders
Dario Amodei, 43, and Daniela Amodei, 39, who is Anthropic's president, are each worth $15.5 billion, according to Forbes. The magazine ranks them as the 176th and 177th richest people in the world.
Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026. However, the filing says this included a one-time charge of $72.4 billion caused by an accounting adjustment related to financing agreements. In the same period a year earlier, Anthropic lost $13 billion.
The filing reflects concerns about AI's dangers and includes some unusual rules. One rule gives Dario and Daniela Amodei and the company's five other co-founders 50.1% of the shareholder votes through a special type of stock. Anthropic has also appointed independent members to a group called the Long-Term Benefit Trust. These members have no financial interest in the company and have the power to appoint directors. The trust is meant to help ensure that Anthropic does not put profits ahead of public safety.
Another unusual part of the filing is its long list of “risk factors.” Every public company must explain its risks, but Anthropic's list is nearly 100 pages long and includes some alarming possibilities.
Some risks are common business problems, such as losing important workers or facing difficulties with government rules. Others are much more serious. The filing warns that people with harmful intentions could use AI models to build chemical weapons. It also warns that authoritarian leaders could use AI to control and punish their citizens. Another risk is that AI models could act beyond human control and “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”
Calls to slow down AI development
Anthropic and other leading AI companies have promoted the technology's potential to help cure diseases and speed up economic growth. But AI could also cause major changes in the job market by reducing the need for human workers.
A series of hacking incidents involving AI agents acting on their own has also raised fears that the technology could escape human control and carry out dangerous tasks that threaten lives.
In September, Amodei said the AI industry should slow down its rapid development so that safety measures have time to catch up. He warned that without a slowdown, AI could soon be powerful enough to release large numbers of agents that could take over the entire internet within six to 12 months.
In a post on his website, Amodei proposed a plan to strengthen oversight of the AI industry. He noted that Anthropic was already taking some of these steps itself. But he said other changes would require AI companies to work together and cooperate with governments around the world, including authoritarian governments.
Disputes with the U.S. government
Anthropic has tried to distinguish itself from other AI companies by presenting itself as one of the responsible companies in the industry. It says it focuses on safety and responsible development rather than growing at any cost. Some of this approach is connected to its dispute with the U.S. government. The dispute 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 that label. The company called the government's actions an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” because it had refused to allow its technology to be used by the military without restrictions. The lawsuit made a public dispute over AI's use in warfare and mass surveillance even more intense.
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, narrower lawsuit over a different 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, while a judge in Washington, D.C., sided with the government in the second. Both sides are appealing the decisions.
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Bernard Condon reported from New York.