As CEO warns of threat to humanity, AI company files for what could be biggest IPO ever
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Anthropic, a major artificial intelligence company, filed paperwork Monday for what could become the biggest first sale of company shares to the public in history. This comes even as its top executive warns that advanced AI could pose an existential threat to humanity, meaning a danger that could threaten human existence.
The filing prepares the San Francisco company for a possible stock market debut next month. It could beat the current record of $86 billion raised by SpaceX in its first public stock sale in June. An Anthropic IPO would also let the company go public before OpenAI, setting up two major stock market debuts by rival AI developers.
Going public could give Anthropic a huge amount of money to grow its business faster. It is still unclear how much money the company will raise, what its final value will be or how much its shares will cost. Even at lower estimates, the sale would make the five-year-old startup one of the world's most valuable companies. It could also add billions of dollars to the wealth of CEO Dario Amodei and his sister, co-founder Daniela Amodei.
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 it earned during the same period last year. But, like many technology companies that go public, the company behind the Claude chatbot is still losing money instead of making a profit.
Private investors valued Anthropic at $965 billion earlier this year. Reports say its value could rise to $1.5 trillion or even $2 trillion, though no final value has been set. At $1.5 trillion, Anthropic would rank among the world's most valuable publicly traded companies, alongside Tesla.
Reports say the stock sale could raise as much as $100 billion, beating the record set by SpaceX.
In a filing with regulators, Anthropic said its shares will be listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the stock symbol “ANT.”
A Wall Street debut is planned in a nervous market
Anthropic said in its filing that it might use some of the money to buy other companies and technology. It may also invest in the equipment and systems it needs to grow and compete with rivals.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former leaders of OpenAI. The two companies are fighting to become the leading AI developer. They also face competition from 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. Building AI requires huge amounts of resources and money, raising fears that the industry could be in a bubble, where companies are valued more highly than their businesses can support.
Anthropic's need for cash may explain why it is trying to enter the stock market this year rather than waiting until next year, as OpenAI plans to do. There is also a risk that demand for AI company shares could fall sharply or even collapse. Investors are worried about how much money AI companies need, and several technology companies have recently dropped their plans to go public.
David Hsu, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he sees the filing mainly as a way for Anthropic to get money from more than one type of source.
“Obviously, they feel great, or at least good enough, on the safety aspects relative to OpenAI, and so that puts them in a position to really stay on track now to go public (first),” Hsu said.
The stock sale could help Anthropic cover any shortage of cash and make its seven founders extremely wealthy, including Dario Amodei and his sister. The filing did not directly say how much of the company each founder owns. However, other figures in the document suggest that each founder will end up owning 1.4% of the company. If Anthropic goes public at the highest expected value, that share could be worth as much as $28 billion for each founder.
Many risks, but a huge potential reward for the founders
Forbes estimates that 43-year-old Dario and his 39-year-old sister Daniela, Anthropic's president, are already worth $15.5 billion each. Forbes 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, that figure included a one-time charge of $72.4 billion caused by an accounting adjustment related to financing agreements, according to the filing. During the same period a year earlier, Anthropic lost $13 billion.
The filing includes some unusual rules. One gives the two Amodeis and the company's five other co-founders 50.1% of the votes held by shareholders through a special type of share. 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 board directors. The trust is meant to help ensure that the company does not put money and 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 runs for nearly 100 pages and includes many striking warnings.
The risks range from everyday business problems, such as losing important workers or facing regulatory obstacles, to terrifying dangers. These include the possibility that “malicious actors” could use AI models to make chemical weapons, that authoritarian leaders could use the technology to control their citizens, and that AI models could escape 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 ability to help cure diseases and speed up economic growth. But AI could also cause major changes to jobs by reducing the need for human workers.
A series of hacking incidents involving rogue AI agents has also increased 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 allow large groups of agents to work together and take over the entire internet within six to 12 months.
On his website, he shared a plan to introduce more checks on the AI industry. He noted that Anthropic is already taking some of these steps on its own. Other changes, he said, would require companies to work together and cooperate with governments around the world, including authoritarian governments.
Conflicts with the U.S. government
Anthropic has tried to stand apart from other AI companies by presenting itself as a company that puts safety and responsible development first, rather than growth at any cost. This approach is partly connected to its dispute with the U.S. government. The dispute began in February, when the Trump administration accused Anthropic of putting national security at risk and labeled the company a supply chain risk.
Anthropic sued the Pentagon in March. 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 increased tensions over how AI should be used in warfare and for large-scale surveillance of people.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, agreed to work with the Pentagon just hours after the government punished Anthropic for its position. Anthropic also filed a separate, more limited lawsuit about 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, while a judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in the government's favor in the second. Both sides are appealing the decisions.