Anthropic Files for an I.P.O. That Could Be the Largest Ever
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Anthropic, maker of the Claude artificial intelligence models, filed final registration paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday for an initial public offering that is expected to raise more money than any in history. The company plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, with reports putting the potential valuation at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, in league with SpaceX, which was valued at about $1.8 trillion when it listed in June.
The prospectus did not say how many shares Anthropic will offer or at what price range. A reported investor road show could begin as soon as November 9.
Founded five years ago by a breakaway group of OpenAI researchers led by Dario Amodei, Anthropic reported breakneck growth and deeper losses. Revenue in the first half of the year rose 1,300 percent to $16.3 billion. Adjusted operating income, a measure of potential profitability, reached $1.6 billion, against a loss of $1.8 billion a year earlier. The company booked a loss of nearly $81 billion from January to June, up from $13 billion in the same period last year, and has yet to turn an annual profit.
The filing disclosed the scale of Anthropic’s enterprise base. As of September 30, it recorded more than 11,900 customers spending at least $100,000 a year, more than 1,900 spending upward of $1 million, and about 250 spending $10 million or more annually. Customer expansion drove net revenue retention of about 900 percent as of the end of the third quarter, the company said.
Several figures were left out. The prospectus redacts third-quarter revenue — “for the three months ended September 30, 2026” appears as “$_____” — along with details of lease agreements for computing capacity. SEC rules permit redaction of information considered confidential; Michael Dambra, an accounting and law professor at the University at Buffalo, told WIRED there are “practical reasons” for the absence, as September 30 fell only weeks ago.
The prospectus was blunt about the technology’s ambitions and its risks. “We believe this abundance of AI will rapidly transform every sector of the global economy in ways greater than the impact of industrialization, electricity, semiconductors, and the internet,” the filing said. Anthropic also warned that safeguards against misuse, including for biological or chemical weapons, “are incomplete, may be outdated in light of evolving threat models, have been and may in the future again be circumvented.”
The company has faced friction with the Pentagon over how its models may be used, and Mr. Amodei’s public warnings on AI risks have drawn their own questions. Its market debut will test Wall Street’s confidence in the AI boom at a moment of growing anxiety about the borrowing underpinning it.