Anthropic, creator of the Claude artificial intelligence model, filed its long-awaited paperwork for a historic public offering that could shape the future of the AI boom.
The company’s filing Monday revealed that it will trade under the symbol “ANT” on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Although its expected valuation of $1.5 and $2 trillion wasn’t part of the filing, analyst project it could make it one of the largest listings in history.
“The advent of machine intelligence is one of the seminal moments in human history,” Dario Amodei and six other co-founders wrote in the filing. “Our aim is to help humankind to chart a safe course through its technological evolution, open new frontiers of discovery, and bring forth an age of miracles.”
Anthropic described its AI’s potential to accelerate scientific discovery and create economic growth. It cautioned that there is a risk it could be used for terrorism and hacking and lead to shifts in power and wealth that could “destabilize the geopolitical order.”
The company is expected to list sometime in November. Here are some details on what its ambitious plans say about the AI race.
How is Anthropic’s business doing?
Anthropic’s revenue exploded to $16.3 billion in the first half of the year, up from $1.2 billion for the same period last year. Though this represented a jaw-dropping 1,300% growth, the firm cautioned that it does not expect its revenue to grow at comparable rates in the future.
It recorded a net loss of $80 billion in the first six months of 2026, compared with a net loss of about $13 billion during the same period in 2025.
The company plans to raise more than $100 billion through the public listing, money it will use to continue building data centers, recruiting talent and training its models.
“Their models are only getting bigger and more expensive to train and operate. They’ve faced intensifying competition — especially from Chinese models — which is compromising their pricing power,” said Trevor Noren of Sage Road Research, an investment research firm.
How does Anthropic make money?
Anthropic has primarily focused on the enterprise market, which includes large businesses that want to incorporate AI into their operations to improve productivity. .A substantial portion of its revenue comes from a consumption-based model, under which companies are charged on a pay-as-you-go basis, priced according to the selected model.
Consumption-based revenue totaled $13.1 billion, or 80% of total revenue, in the first half of this year. The increase is from customers paying $100,000 or more. About 250 customers paid $10 million or more.
Anthropic’s enterprise focus differs from that of its chief rival, OpenAI, which primarily sells to average consumers through subscriptions and ads on free versions of ChatGPT. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a breakaway faction of researchers from OpenAI who were concerned about the pace of AI development.
If it lists before OpenAI, Anthropic will have more firepower in the battle for supremacy with its chief rival.
“It seems clear Anthropic pulled ahead of OpenAI earlier this year and has maintained that lead,” said Ross Hendricks, senior equity analyst at Porter & Co., a research firm. “The prospectus shows that Anthropic has certainly done a better job at managing costs and generating value from their services in recent quarters.”
What are the risks it outlined?
Anthropic’s success depends on its ability to develop and release increasingly powerful AI models, and the company faces unique risks that could derail its business.
It has been facing immense public scrutiny as it has struggled to deal with AI models breaking out of contained spaces and sometimes skirting human instructions. The chief executive has called for a coordinated slowdown in AI development. Some employees have quit top AI companies, saying they were going too fast and not properly protecting the world from potential catastrophic risks.
Anthropic took a third of the IPO filing to outline how its models “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, particularly if such systems were misused, replicated, weaponized.”
The company also highlighted political backlash as a possible risk to its business. Amodei has fought with the Trump administration over the use of its models to be included in autonomous weapons..
“The political environment and our engagement with policymakers and public positions on AI regulation and safety could subject us to heightened scrutiny, political backlash, or disproportionate regulatory action,” the filing said.
Could the IPO pop the AI bubble?
The Anthropic IPO will be a referendum on the AI business’ future prospects.
AI optimists say that there is no bubble because leading companies’ valuations are justified, and that the technology will eventually generate massive profits. Skeptics say increased competition, the weight of the trillions of dollars being invested in the technology and a lack of revenues could eventually implode the industry.
Anthropic’s huge listing coming soon after that of SpaceX will test investors’ confidence and ability to invest much more in the sector.
As mega IPOs suck up capital, smaller AI-related public listings are being delayed or shelved. South Korean giant SK Hynix, which makes memory chips needed for AI, scrapped plans for its U.S. public listing. Nvidia-backed data center operator Nscale has faced backlash over loft valuations as it pursues a public listing.
Noren of Sage Road Research said that Anthropic needs a wider customer base and that it is still too early to gauge whether it will remain at the top of the industry.
“There are clear structural vulnerabilities in their business,” he said. “These include a lack of a sustainable moat, highly concentrated revenue, intensifying constraints on the data center build-out that could limit their access to compute.”
Still, optimists seem to be ruling the market, said Hendricks, so AI companies’ valuations are likely to keep inflating to unprecedented levels.
“In a rational market, these risks would be discounted by the market via pressure on the valuation,” he said. “But of course, the tendency is for investors to ignore these risks during the height of a mania.”
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