Anthropic publicly filed its initial public offering paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, setting up what could be the largest stock offering in history for the maker of the Claude AI assistant.1,3,4,8
The filing carries weight beyond one company. Anthropic and OpenAI have largely driven the artificial intelligence boom, and Japan Times reported that Anthropic’s public market performance might cement or capsize Wall Street’s confidence in it. The offering is set for around the middle of November, Mother Jones reported. CNBC reported that neocloud and data center companies have been under pressure.4,7,1
The filing shows rapid revenue growth. Second-quarter revenue rose to $11.56 billion from $787 million a year earlier, and first-half revenue reached $16.3 billion, a more than 14-fold increase over the same period the year before, according to the filing. The company reported $974 million in operating income for the second quarter, after five quarters of operating losses.1,4
The filing also discloses large losses. CNBC put losses for the first half of the year at over $80 billion, while Japan Times put the net loss for the first two quarters at nearly $81 billion. Revenue growth has slowed from around 140% to 45% between the second and third quarters of 2026, Japan Times reported.1,4
Figures for the company’s cash also differ. CNBC said Anthropic held almost $132 billion in cash, equivalents and short-term investments at the end of June. Axios put the figure at more than $130 billion as of June 30, and said the filing lists more than $134 billion in cash and similar securities.1,8
Expectations for the company’s value are high, although the public documents do not disclose the exact valuation, Mother Jones reported. The valuation rose from $183 billion a little over a year ago to $965 billion in its most recent round, and early expectations put it at upward of nearly $2 trillion once public, Japan Times reported. Theory Ventures estimated that reaching a $2 trillion valuation would require 50% growth.4,7,8
The company is closely tied to the largest technology firms. Close to half its revenue comes from Claude sold through the cloud divisions of Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, all of which hold investments in the company. Japan Times put first-half sales from three technology firms’ cloud marketplaces at 48%, while Axios said nearly 50% of first-half revenue came through marketplaces run by Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Axios noted that those companies are also investors, computing suppliers and competitors.1,4,8
Investors have offered differing views. Jai Das, co-founder of Sapphire Ventures, said, “If it underperforms expectations, it’ll be a little bit of a house of cards.” Brad Bernstein, a managing partner at growth equity firm FTV Capital, said, “If they don’t perform well, they will become the bellwether for AI.” He added, “Everything is going to have to sort of be reset.”1
Others were more positive. Rohit Kulkarni, partner and chief AI officer at Burnham Park Capital Markets, said of the financials, “It is, I think, better than feared.” Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson, said the offering would be “investors’ first significant opportunity to invest directly in the company that is driving the AI economy.”1,4
The prospectus named only OpenAI and Google as competitors, though Anthropic said it faces competition from a “broader set of model providers,” including open-weight or open-source models. Some investors see those models as a concern because they are cheaper for businesses to access and allow for customization. Michael Monaghan, portfolio manager at Founder ETFs, said, “I think there’s going to be room for frontier models like Anthropic and OpenAI and SpaceX, and I think there will be room for open-weight models.” Anthropic says it is all very early, with Fortune 500 companies committing less than 0.1% of their total expenses to its models and services in the latest quarter.1
In the filing, Anthropic warned that advanced models may be delayed by cybersecurity and safety threats that risk eclipsing their benefits. “Moving quickly brings AI’s benefits sooner, but moving too quickly could outrun the world’s ability to make AI systems safe,” the company wrote. It said its safeguards against misuse, such as the development of biological or chemical weapons, “are incomplete, may be outdated in light of evolving threat models, have been and may in the future again be circumvented.” Some, including New York City’s comptroller, have previously called on Anthropic to pause its IPO until it fully addresses safety risks.5,4
Chief Executive Dario Amodei has said that predicting demand for the technology is uniquely challenging. In a lengthy podcast interview near the start of the year, he said, “I don’t think the economics of this industry work that way.” In a statement about the filing, Anthropic said the hope is to achieve something “without historical precedent: what we refer to as a country of geniuses in a data center, available to every organization and sector of the economy.”4,6
Axios put the company’s computing obligations at almost $650 billion, while Theory Ventures’ Tomasz Tunguz cited $637 billion in computing commitments. Anthropic intends to use the capital raised in the offering to fund investments in chips, data centers and talent. Mother Jones reported that the founders have pledged to donate most of their stock, but the filing calls that promise a “revocable,” nonbinding “expression” that depends on market conditions.8,4,7
Tunguz asked rhetorically, “What is Anthropic worth?” He said, “The case for a very large number is simple.” “The case against is equally simple,” he added.8
