Anthropic Files for IPO: Revenue Soars, but So Do Losses and Risk Warnings
AI company Anthropic has publicly filed its S-1 document to list on the stock market. It reveals fast-growing revenue, large losses and warnings about the risks posed by artificial intelligence.
Anthropic, the US artificial intelligence company behind the Claude models, publicly filed its S-1 document on Monday, the paperwork required to offer shares on the stock market in an initial public offering (IPO). Editors at WIRED discussed the filing on their Uncanny Valley podcast. Anthropic is expected to raise more money than any company in history, and it would be the first major US company focused solely on AI software to go public. That is why the listing is seen as a test not only for the AI industry but for the entire US economy.
The numbers
The company's valuation rose from $183 billion a little over a year ago to $965 billion in its latest funding round. Some expect it could approach $2 trillion once trading begins. The filing offers the first real look inside the business, since a private company is not required to disclose such details.
Revenue reached $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, more than 14 times the figure for the same period a year earlier. At the same time, the company has even larger losses and has already committed hundreds of billions of dollars to computing capacity. The editors note that most of the money comes from Claude Code, a coding product sold to businesses.
Dependence and risks
Roughly half of revenue came through the cloud marketplaces of three tech companies, which are also competitors. According to figures from the fintech firm Ramp, about 80 percent of revenue at both Anthropic and OpenAI comes from around the top 1 percent of AI spenders.
The risk factors section is the longest part of the prospectus, at about 94 pages. It states that sufficiently advanced AI systems could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. Recursive self-improvement, in which a model improves itself, is cited both as a possible danger and as a competitive advantage. Bills by US lawmakers Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna would ban the practice.
