Anthropic warns of 'catastrophic risk' to humankind ahead of blockbuster share listing

Anthropic has warned that artificial intelligence could pose 'catastrophic or existential risks to humanity' as it prepares for a blockbuster stock market listing.

In documents filed ahead of its planned debut on the Nasdaq, where it will trade under the ticker ANT, the maker of the Claude chatbot said advanced AI systems could pose grave dangers without proper safeguards, oversight and security — particularly if they were misused, copied, weaponised or allowed to act with a high degree of autonomy. The concerns were raised by policymakers, regulators, researchers and people inside the company.

The listing is expected to be one of the largest ever, with Anthropic's valuation tipped to top SpaceX's roughly $1.8 trillion debut from the summer. It has not yet said how many shares it will sell, at what price, or when. The company reported $16.3bn (£12.2bn) of revenue in the first half of the year, but its losses were larger still, and across about 90 pages of risk factors it warned of its reliance on cloud providers and Taiwanese chipmakers and of possible regulatory action over harms linked to its models.

Anthropic was founded five years ago by chief executive Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei and five others, and announced in June that it intended to go public. Rival OpenAI soon followed, and its own listing is expected early next year.

The filing also struck an upbeat note, calling AI 'one of the most consequential technologies in human history' and arguing it could speed up progress in biology and medicine and lift economic growth, while pledging to develop it responsibly — aiming to be 'bold but sane'.