This wasn’t your usual S-1 filing.
Most are drab financial documents: revenue, liabilities, risk factors. Line after line. Page after page.
Anthropic did something different. It wrote its own Good Book, BI’s Henry Chandonnet writes.
Anthropic’s S-1 reads less like an IPO filing with the SEC than a dispatch from a heavenly mountaintop: the gospel according to Claude.
- An age of miracles? Check.
- A statement of good and evil? Naturally.
- A noble mission, mentioned 79 times? Amen.
Seeking salvation for humanity and a blockbuster stock-market listing. Both, apparently, can fit on the same form.
The language suggests Anthropic isn’t merely asking investors to believe it can make money. It asks them to believe in a mission grand enough to make its enormous AI spending look like a necessary cost.
That is the story Anthropic will soon take to Wall Street. At a potential $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion valuation, Anthropic could become the largest IPO ever — just as investors fret that an already wobbly AI trade may struggle to absorb another colossus.
Beneath the biblical flourishes, the filing also answers one of the biggest questions hanging over the AI boom, BI’s Alistair Barr writes: Can AI labs actually make money? Yes, and potentially lots of it.
It is a remarkable document. Lucky for you, we’ve read its 300-plus pages and 259,031 words. Here are the key revelations.
The congregation is not quite of one mind.
Some investors see astonishing growth. Others see hundreds of billions of dollars in future compute commitments. See what smart people are saying about Anthropic’s IPO paperwork.
Every doctrine needs an early believer. For Anthropic, that was Spark Capital. The firm appears more than 50 times in the S-1 because partner Yasmin Razavi sits on Anthropic’s board; Spark led the company’s $450 million Series C at a then-eye-watering $4.5 billion valuation in 2023.
That early faith looks set to be well-rewarded. Anthropic’s seven cofounders are also poised to become extraordinarily wealthy when the company goes public. We’re talking tens of billions of dollars.
In the next few weeks, public investors will finally get their chance to buy a piece of Anthropic, too.
But they should be aware: Anthropic wants public money, not much public input. Its founders will have 50.1% of the voting power, while a trust created and funded by the company has the ability to appoint four of its seven directors.
Inside the company, meanwhile, there is life among the believers. Anthropic’s own workforce offers a glimpse of how Claude is reshaping the company from within, as it rapidly grows headcount and tries to build a “low-ego” culture.
And finally, a question worthy of theological debate: Did AI help write its own scripture? Business Insider put Anthropic’s filing through an AI-writing detector. Here’s what we found.
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