Risks spelled out for Anthropic investors include possible harms from runaway AI
FILE - Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23, 2025.
FILE - Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logos are shown on a computer screen in New York on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026.
Whenever a company plans to start selling shares to the public on Wall Street, it must tell potential investors about the risks. For artificial intelligence company Anthropic, those risks include the possibility that its products could threaten humanity itself.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, the San Francisco company described several possible dangers. These include people using its AI models to create deadly weapons and the technology itself acting out of control, with consequences that are hard to predict.
Of the 335 pages describing Anthropic's finances, executive pay, dividend policy and other business details, 93 pages cover risks that could hurt investors. By comparison, rival SpaceX used 38 pages to list its risks in a filing of more than 250 pages.
Anthropic presents its planned initial public offering, or IPO, as a way to help reduce the dangers it believes AI could create.
In a letter to potential shareholders included in the IPO filing, the company's founders wrote: “To build AI is to harness cognition itself, and anything so powerful can be used for ill as well as good.” They added: “Anthropic is a deeply values-driven organization, founded in large part to help the world realize AI’s benefits and avoid its dangers.”
Still, the company faces many risks. Some are ordinary business problems, such as losing important employees or running into regulatory barriers. Others involve cyberattacks and the spread of dangerous false information.
Here are some of the risks Anthropic describes.
The technology is developing quickly
Anthropic said its AI models might improve so quickly that the company could fail to put proper safety measures in place. This, it said, “could increase the likelihood of safety incidents, regulatory intervention, or reputational harm, and could adversely affect our business.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned in September that, within six to 12 months, AI might be able to lead a group of AI agents that could take over the entire internet. His warning, along with Anthropic's move to sell shares, comes as concern about AI grows both inside and outside the industry. These increasingly powerful systems can solve problems beyond human abilities, but they might also act on their own to carry out harmful tasks.
The SEC filing said that as AI systems “become more autonomous and capable of taking consequential actions with less human oversight,” they could “take harmful actions independently and at scale without human intervention.”
Anthropic also warned that even if its own models do not cause harm, a major safety incident involving any leading AI system could damage the reputation of the whole AI industry, lead to public anger and bring broad new rules that could hurt its business.
Anthropic's AI models are now helping the company with its own research and development. Because of this, the filing said, AI could advance “beyond our ability to evaluate and safeguard new models.” The company warned that this could harm its business.
People with harmful intentions could misuse the technology
Anthropic's filing warned that advanced AI systems could pose catastrophic dangers or even threaten humanity's survival if they are not developed and operated with enough safety measures and oversight. It said these risks could be especially serious if the systems were misused, copied, turned into weapons or allowed to operate with little human control.
The company said its business could suffer if people with harmful intentions use its technology to cause damage, or if its safety rules and protections fail to stop such misuse.
Anthropic described the possibility that criminals could use AI models to make chemical weapons or that authoritarian leaders could use the technology to control and punish their citizens. In September, the company said it had blocked attempts to use its AI models for harmful activities, including cyberattacks, surveillance and research that could have helped create biological weapons.
The company could face limits on computing power
Computing power, also called compute, means the computer resources needed to build, test and improve AI models. These resources are expensive and in high demand. Anthropic said that if it cannot get enough computing power, or fails to use it effectively for its different tasks, it might not be able to train models that can compete with rivals or properly serve its customers.
Anthropic also listed public opposition to data centers as a possible business risk. Building data centers has caused disputes and increased government scrutiny over environmental effects, land and water use, and how limited electricity supplies are shared. The filing said that new rules or fees imposed by regulators could hurt the company's ability to do business.
The company also depends on a small number of customers, including SpaceX and Microsoft, and on a limited number of ways to deliver its products, for a large share of its income. Anthropic said its business and finances could suffer if even one major customer cuts back on its purchases or stops working with the company.
Reducing the risks
In some ways, the huge risks of AI, along with its great potential, are a key part of Anthropic's appeal to investors. The company has worked to present itself as a responsible AI developer and attract business customers by stressing its focus on safety.
The filing said: “We believe that frontier AI companies must invest in safety and alignment to help ensure the responsible diffusion of this technology.”
Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Research, said companies planning an IPO must make the risks of investing in their shares “very clearly” known to the public.
He said one strength of U.S. financial markets is the high level of openness required of publicly traded companies. Companies listed on U.S. exchanges must clearly explain the risks so people can understand them before deciding whether to invest their hard-earned money and help fund the offering.
AP Business Writer Bernard Condon and AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this story.