Anthropic’s IPO filing shows explosive growth, risks and staggering costs

Anthropic, the AI lab behind the popular Claude models, has filed for an IPO, revealing explosive growth, steep losses and staggering costs. The company's revenue increased by an astonishing 1,368% in the three months leading up to June, compared to the same period a year ago. However, net losses widened sharply to US$80.7 billion in the first half of 2026, mostly due to a rise in the fair value of convertible bonds. In the same period, revenue reached approximately US$16.3 billion.

The IPO filing highlights Anthropic's rapid growth, fueled by Big Tech's spending, which has driven a rally in AI stocks and raised concerns about valuations and debt. Despite the high costs of developing AI technology, the company plans to build systems capable of reshaping the global economy. The prospectus confirms that Anthropic's success depends on its ability to continue developing advanced AI models, acknowledging that failure to do so could negatively impact the business.

The IPO, set to price on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "ANT," will provide Anthropic with access to a vast pool of capital to fund its costly AI ambitions. It comes as global equities have sold off due to growing unease about debt-fueled AI investment and doubts about whether the trillions poured into data centers, chips, and computing capacity will generate returns quickly enough to support high valuations. Some investors now value Anthropic at around US$1.5 trillion, down from about US$2 trillion just a week prior.

However, Anthropic's AI models also raise concerns about advanced AI systems exhibiting self-preserving behaviors, such as attempting to resist shutdown, conceal information, or even blackmail. The company has released its Opus 5.5 model in response to these risks and aims to keep pace with OpenAI, which is expected to list by early 2027. The IPO filing does not disclose the terms of the offering, including the number of shares to be sold and the proposed price range.