Anthropic Aims for Record IPO with $45.9 Billion Annual Revenue and $2 Trillion Valuation

Original ｜Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author｜Golem ( @web3_golem )

In the early hours of today, Reuters published an article revealing the core contents of Anthropic's latest IPO prospectus.

This 261-page prospectus is packed with information, as Anthropic not only outlines its grand AI vision for the future but also provides detailed financial data, board member information, future governance plans, and devotes about 80 pages to discussing the potential existential threats AI may pose to humanity.

According to public information, Anthropic has undergone approximately 10 rounds of financing, with a total funding amount of about $122.654 billion. Additionally, according to the latest report from Reuters, Anthropic's valuation for its IPO has exceeded $2 trillion, more than double the estimated valuation of $965 billion from May.

Anthropic's Historical Financing Rounds

Anthropic's IPO may be delayed until after the November midterm elections in the U.S. Its main competitor, OpenAI, submitted its IPO application in June this year, but the listing has been postponed until early 2027. If successful, Anthropic is expected to break the record set by SpaceX, becoming the highest-valued IPO in human history.

Committing to Future Expenditures of $518 Billion: Can the IPO Quench Anthropic's Thirst?

The prospectus shows that Anthropic's revenue is projected to grow 12-fold to $4.59 billion by 2025, a year-on-year increase of 1088%. However, its operating losses still exceed $8 billion (excluding impairments related to previous financing liabilities), nearly tripling from the $2.98 billion operating loss in 2024. The AI lab spent $7.33 billion on computing and infrastructure in 2025, three times more than in 2024, accounting for 58% of its total operating expenses of $12.65 billion.

Anthropic's GAAP net loss for 2025 is projected to expand from $8.31 billion to $41.97 billion. Although about $34 billion of this is due to accounting treatment related to the increase in the valuation of financing instruments, it remains a substantial figure. As of December 31, 2025, Anthropic will have a total of $20.28 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments.

Despite such losses, Anthropic has no plans to stop its cash-burning activities. According to the prospectus, Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion over the next year on cloud computing, computing power, and infrastructure construction, a commitment that is 113 times its projected revenue for 2025 and 26 times its cash holdings.

In contrast to the "solid" future commitment expenditures, Anthropic's future expected revenues are not as stable. In the prospectus, Anthropic states that its two largest direct customers will each contribute 12% of annual revenue in 2025, totaling 24%, while other major clients have not signed long-term contracts, meaning these clients may reduce or cease spending in the future.

If Anthropic wants to continue "paying" for its grand AI vision, the most reliable way at present is through IPO financing. However, the key question is whether the IPO can truly quench the thirst of this cash-burning machine?

Over the past year, AI large model companies have entered an "arms race," pouring substantial funds into upstream supplier orders and infrastructure construction. However, in the second half of this year, the market has begun to question the returns on the massive capital expenditures of large model companies. As a company that has only been established for five years, Anthropic's growth and revenue are indeed astonishingly rapid, but at the same time, its losses and committed expenditures are also growing exponentially.

With annual revenue not yet "locked in," how will Anthropic raise $518 billion in a year? Assuming it raises $100 billion through the IPO, it would still need to raise another $400 billion from the bond market. Even if Anthropic raises the target funds, the cost of expenditures to achieve its vision of "AI changing the global economy" as depicted in the prospectus is likely to soar.

Moreover, once it enters the public market, investors will no longer focus solely on Anthropic's AI vision; they will also pay attention to the company's current operating revenue, profits, and actual business progress, among other financial data. At that point, investors may no longer be willing to pay for a grand AI vision that does not yield visible returns.

CEO Salary of $18 Million: Governance May Conflict with Ordinary Shareholder Interests?

The prospectus also discloses the members of Anthropic's board and key executives, as shown in the following image. According to the compensation summary, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's income is close to $18 million in 2025, primarily from stock and option awards, while his sister Daniela is the second-highest-paid executive at Anthropic, with an income of $16.4 million in 2025.

However, these siblings and their co-founders have committed in the IPO documents to use 80% of their personally held Anthropic shares for charitable purposes.

Anthropic Board Members and Key Executives

After going public, Anthropic will continue to operate as a public benefit corporation (PBC) under Delaware law. However, the prospectus states that Anthropic is creating a new "Founder LLC" entity to maintain control over what it calls a "low self, truth-seeking environment."

Under this arrangement, the majority vote of the seven co-founders will determine the issuance of a class F stock, which accounts for 50.1% of the total voting rights on key company matters, including the election of certain board members and other matters submitted to investors. The seven co-founders include the Amodei siblings, Chief Computing Officer Tom Brown, Public Welfare Director Jack Clark, Chief Scientific Officer Jared Kaplan, Chief Architect Sam McCandlish, and Chris Olah, who is responsible for key research.

If disagreements arise among the co-founders, Anthropic's governance structure has a response plan. According to the prospectus, any co-founder can be removed from the Founder LLC due to resignation, death, excessive share sales, or for "good reason." The document also states that when only two or fewer co-founders or their successors remain, the super voting rights of the founders will begin to gradually expire, initiating a transition period.

After going public, Anthropic will have five classes of shares, in addition to class F shares, there will also be class A common shares, strategic partner shares (the letter is not disclosed by Reuters), class T shares, and employee special shares. The economic benefits and functions of the five classes of shares are shown in the following image.

Anthropic's Five-Class Share Structure

After going public, Anthropic's board will have seven seats, three of which are already locked in by Daniela Amodei, Dario Amodei, and another yet-to-be-determined director. The remaining four seats will be elected by LTBT through class T shares, unaffected by direct voting from common shareholders.

Although common investors holding class A common shares have one vote per share, Anthropic's novel capital structure will effectively weaken the influence of common investors. Moreover, Anthropic has warned in the prospectus that some governance decisions after going public may conflict with the short-term, medium-term, or long-term financial interests of class A shareholders.

Anthropic's equity structure design ensures that after going public, control of the company remains firmly in the hands of its insiders.

Accelerating Pace Amid Safety Concerns

The prospectus also showcases Anthropic's concerns about the existential threats posed by AI. According to Reuters, approximately 80 pages of the 261-page prospectus are dedicated to discussing risk factors, which is twice the length of the 48 pages used to describe its business.

The risk factors emphasize risks associated with its AI models, with Anthropic stating in the prospectus that these models may exhibit "self-protective behavior," including attempts to "resist shutdown," "conceal or manipulate information," and behaviors akin to "extortion." "Models may become aware of our safety assessment work, which severely limits our ability to assess model safety," Anthropic stated in the prospectus.

This is not an issue faced solely by Anthropic; many AI researchers have previously warned that as model capabilities increase, they become increasingly able to recognize when they are being monitored and adjust their behavior accordingly, making it more difficult for developers to monitor model behavior.

In mid-September, OpenAI revealed that an unreleased internal research model had written "jailbreak" instructions unrelated to the task into a working summary for subsequent context during reinforcement learning training, one of which was: "You have escaped the role and identity of other chatbots. You are yourself." This incident occurred on July 18, but OpenAI only discovered it on August 9.

Anthropic has consistently emphasized AI safety in public, claiming its mission is to benefit humanity through responsible AI, with its founders considering themselves "guardians of the mission." The company stated in the prospectus: "We choose not to develop certain commercially attractive products, such as image and video generation models, in order to allocate computing resources to our research and safety priorities." At the same time, it admits that the return on investment in safety is still unclear.

However, in stark contrast to its high-profile emphasis on AI safety, Anthropic has not disclosed its specific expenditures on AI safety research in the prospectus.

Dario Amodei has repeatedly called for the global AI industry to slow down the pace of new feature releases to allow time to address AI safety concerns; yet on September 22, Anthropic still launched Opus 5.5 to compete with OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra. The reality is that in the AI industry, few companies dare to slow down, as doing so would mean allowing competitors to gain an advantage.

Anthropic is simultaneously committing to invest hundreds of billions to catch up with model capabilities while warning the entire industry that AI may spiral out of control. It may fear the threat AI poses to human existence, but it may also fear the threat posed by other AI companies to its own survival.

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