SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic filed papers Monday for what could be the largest stock IPO ever, even as its top executive warns that advanced AI could pose a problem. existential threat to humanity.
The filing sets the San Francisco company up for its Wall Street debut next month, potentially eclipsing SpaceX’s IPO in June that raised a record $86 billion. An Anthropic IPO would also give the company a head start over OpenAI when it comes to its IPO in what is expected to be a pair of Successful stocks debut for rival AI labs.
The filing comes weeks after CEO Dario Amodei argued in an essay for slow down development of the most advanced AI models. An IPO could provide Anthropic with enormous resources to accelerate its expansion. How much the company will ultimately raise remains uncertain, as do its final valuation and offering price, but even with lower estimates, it would transform the five-year-old startup into one of the most valuable companies in the world and could potentially increase the wealth of Amodei and his sister and co-founder, Daniela, by billions of dollars.
The 335-page document shows that Anthropic’s revenue is growing rapidly, but like many other IPO tech companies, it has yet to turn a profit. The company behind the Claude chatbot reported a net loss of $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026, although its losses after removing some items were only a fraction of that sum. During the same period a year ago, Anthropic lost $13 billion.
Despite the losses, Anthropic, valued earlier this year at $965 billion by private investors, is expected to see that value rise to as much as $1.5 trillion or even $2 trillion, although its final valuation has not been established. At $1.5 trillion, Anthropic would rank among the most valuable public companies in the world, alongside Tesla.
As for the funds raised, the offering could raise up to $100 billion, according to reports, surpassing the current record set by one of Elon Musk’s companies, SpaceX, earlier this year.
In a regulatory filing, Anthropic said it would list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “ANT.”
Many risks, but a big reward for the founders
In the filing, the company said it could use some of that money to acquire other businesses and technologies, as well as invest in infrastructure to grow its business and take on competitors.
Formed in 2021 by former OpenAI executives, Anthropic is engaged in a struggle for dominance with that company, and the two executives, Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, are widely considered bitter rivals.
But they have many other competitors, including Google, new startups in the US and China, and EspaceXwhich has AI activity. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX’s AI division all lost more money than they made due to the enormous resource costs needed to build AI, fueling fears of a bubble.
The need for liquidity may explain why Anthropic is rushing to the public markets this year, and not waiting until next year, as OpenAI predicts. Adding to this pressure is the possibility that demand for AI stocks will fall, or even collapse, in the coming months. Investors are increasingly nervous about the sector’s massive financing needs, and several technology companies have recently abandoned their IPO plans.
In addition to helping close any cash flow shortfalls, the IPO will bring extraordinary wealth to Anthropic’s seven founders, including Amodei and his sister. Together, they own nearly 500 million shares, although the offering document does not specify exactly how much that will mean for the company after the IPO.
Dario, 43, and Daniela, 39, president of Anthropic, are each worth $15.5 billion, according to Forbes, which ranks them as the 176th and 177th richest people in the world.
Reflecting AI’s dangers, the document includes unusual provisions, including granting these two and their five other co-founders 50.1% of shareholder votes through a special class of shares. Anthropic also appointed independent, financially disinterested members of a so-called Long-Term Benefit Trust, holding the power to appoint trustees, designed to ensure the company does not put financial interests ahead of public safety.
Another unusual feature of the filing is its long list of “risk factors,” a mandatory disclosure for any public company, but in this case running to nearly 100 pages – and making for compelling reading.
Risks include day-to-day – the possibility that it will not be able to retain key personnel or overcome regulatory hurdles – and the horrible. The latter includes the prospect of “malicious actors” using AI models to manufacture chemical weapons, authoritarian leaders turning to this technology to crack down on their citizens, and, given the numerous hacking incidents recently committed by malicious AI agents, the possibility that Anthropic’s AI models “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”
Calls for AI to slow down
The IPO comes as reports emerge of AI’s ability to definitively solve problems beyond human capabilities, but also to perform harmful and life-threatening tasks while humans lose control.
In September, Amodei said the AI industry should slow down its rapid development give security measures It’s time to catch up. Without such a slowdown, Amodei warned that the AI might be able to unleash a swarm of agents that could take control of the entire Internet within six to 12 months.
He proposed a plan in a message on its website to increase controls on the industry, noting that Anthropic is already undertaking some of this on its own initiative. As for other measures, however, he said they would require coordination within the industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian governments.
“I think if slowing down allowed us to gain another year or two before the models reached critical levels of capabilities, and we used that time to advance the alignment, we could significantly reduce the risk of something going seriously wrong,” Amodei wrote.
Clashes with the US government
Anthropic has tried to distance itself from other AI companies as the “good guys,” focusing on safety and responsible development rather than growth at all costs and with few safeguards. Part of this feeling comes from the fact that the company dispute with the US governmentthat erupted in February when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk.
Anthropic continued the Pentagon about the supply chain risk designation in March for what it called an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” for its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology. The legal challenge has intensified an unusually public debate over how AI can be used in war and mass surveillance.
ChatGPT creator OpenAI struck its own deal to work with the Pentagon hours after the government punished Anthropic for its stance. Anthropic also filed a separate, narrower complaint involving a different rule the Pentagon is using to try to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk.
A California judge ruled The favor of the anthropic in the first case and a Washington D.C. judge on the government side in the second. Both parties are appealing these decisions.
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Condon reported from New York.
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