In Anthropic's Historic IPO Filing, A Mention Of AI's "Existential Risks"

Anthropic PBC filed for an IPO, warning its technology carried existential risks even as it moved a step closer to being the first company focused primarily on developing the most advanced artificial intelligence models to go public.

The company behind Claude expects to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT, a filing Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed. Anthropic filed confidentially in June for a listing.

The IPO is being led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, along with 20 other banks, the filing shows. Anthropic and some of its shareholders are offering stock in the IPO, according to the filing. The amount of shares they're offering will be disclosed in a later filing.

The company's debut has become a focal point for the world's hopes and fears over artificial intelligence, which run the gamut from worries over job displacement and the substantial upfront spending the technology needs to other, more existential questions: Anthropic's prospectus has flagged various "risks to humanity" including attempts to "resist shutdown" and "conceal or manipulate information."

READ | Anthropic Unveils Blockbuster IPO Plan As First-Half Losses Hit $80 Billion

Anthropic had an $80.7 billion net loss on revenue of $16.3 billion in the first six months of 2026, versus a $13 billion net loss on revenue of $1.2 billion in the same period last year, the filing shows.

The company has mainly focused on serving the enterprise market. Anthropic's net revenue retention, a measure of its ability to keep its existing customers and increase their spending over time, is about 900 per cent, the filing shows.

Anthropic said 79 per cent of its revenue came from customers outside of its top five customers for the third quarter of the year.

'Existential Risks'

Anthropic is seeking to tap the public market's ample funding capacity to maintain its lead over rivals, as AI companies burn through hundreds of billions of dollars to continue advancing their so-called frontier models.

It is set to begin formally marketing for its initial public offering as soon as the week of Nov. 9, Bloomberg News has reported. Anthropic expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's record-setting IPO, people familiar with the matter have said.

The company and its rival OpenAI are also facing mounting public scrutiny over AI safety after a string of high-profile hacking incidents by rogue agents, ramping up concern about the potential impact on Anthropic's market debut.

READ | Anthropic's Claude Accessed Georgia Voter Data Without Human Approval: Report

Anthropic emphasised the potential for its AI to "behave in unintended, misaligned, or autonomous ways" in the filing. If its technologies are not developed with adequate safeguards and oversight, it could "pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, particularly if such systems were misused, replicated, weaponised, or allowed to operate with a high degree of autonomy."

Consumption-based revenue rose from $288 million, and 75 per centof the company's revenue, for the year that ended Dec. 31, 2024 to $3.8 billion, and 83 per cent of the total, for last year. IT made up $13.1 billion, and 80 per cent of revenue, between January and June of this year. For Anthropic, consumption-based revenue refers to customers that pay for its AI models as they use them, based on the amount of tokens and the type of AI model they use.

The company's total indebtedness stood at $6.2 billion as of June 30, and it said it could raise more debt going forward to meet its financing needs.

Anthropic said it has a revolving credit facility of up $15 billion, which it increased in size from $3.25 billion. Revolving loans work much like a credit card, allowing a company to borrow, repay and borrow again up to a set limit over the life of the facility. They are commonly used by companies to provide financial flexibility and ready access to liquidity when needed. The revolver will mature in 2031, the company said.

It added that, after obtaining an investment-grade credit rating from at least two of the three major credit rating agencies, the revolving loan could become unsecured.

Computing Power

The company spent $8.9 billion on computing power and infrastructure in the six months that ended June 30, up 283 per cent from the year prior. The company noted that these expenses declined as a percentage of revenue, seemingly responding to concerns about the pace of spending.

Just since the end of 2025, Anthropic entered into new agreements for computing power with minimum obligations of about $417 billion. These agreements will generally start this year or next, with terms as long as 20 years.

Anthropic's compute economics have improved as revenue has scaled. Compute and infrastructure spending was more than 10 times revenue in 2023, falling to 653 per cent in 2024, 160 per cent in 2025 and just 55 per cent in the first half of 2026. In the second quarter alone, it fell further to 48 per cent of revenue - meaning Anthropic was spending about 48 cents on compute and infrastructure for every dollar of sales.

Goldman Sachs touted its role in the coveted lead-left position in marketing documents sent to clients, after securing the same role for the record-setting listing of SpaceX earlier this year, a document seen by Bloomberg shows. Morgan Stanley, its rival, is the so-called stabilization agent, a sought-after role that would see it engage in transactions that reduce volatility in the stock, the filing shows.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)