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

Anthropic has filed papers for what could be the biggest stock market debut in history, setting up a Wall Street listing next month that could eclipse SpaceX's record $86bn offering in June — even as its chief executive warns that advanced AI could pose an existential threat to humanity.

Revenue jumped 1,368 percent in the three months ended June 30 from a year earlier, though the prospectus warned that growth could slow and fluctuate. Its net loss in the first half of 2026 widened sharply to $80.7bn, largely because of a rise in the value of bonds that can convert into shares.

The listing, expected before Thanksgiving in late November, would make Anthropic — founded in 2021 and valued at $965bn in a May funding round — a benchmark for how Wall Street prices leading AI companies, including rival OpenAI. Some investors already value it at about $1.5 trillion. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will lead the offering alongside 20 other banks, and the shares will trade on the Nasdaq as ANT.

The prospectus also dwells on the dangers of the technology. It warns that Anthropic's models could show "self-preserving behaviours", including conduct "resembling blackmail", and produce outputs that could be seen as "coercive, deceptive, or manipulative". The company also relies on a small group of cloud providers — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — and suppliers such as Broadcom.

The debut comes at a nervous moment. Unease about the debt-fuelled AI boom has triggered a global selloff in AI and technology stocks, as investors question whether trillions spent on data centres and chips will pay off quickly. Even so, tech firms are still hungry for cash: Meta is aiming to raise up to $95bn.