(Al Jazeera Media Network) Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has filed papers for what could be the biggest ever initial public offering (IPO) of stock, even as its top executive warns that advanced AI could pose an existential threat to humanity.
The filing on Monday sets up the San Francisco company for a Wall Street debut next month, potentially eclipsing the SpaceX initial public offering in June that raised a record $86 billion.
The filing comes weeks after chief executive and co-founder Dario Amodei argued in an essay for slowing the development of the most advanced AI models.
An IPO could provide Anthropic with enormous resources to accelerate its expansion. The amount the company ultimately raises remains uncertain, as does its final valuation and offering price. But even at lower estimates, it would turn the five-year-old startup into one of the world’s most valuable companies and potentially boost the wealth of Amodei and his sister and cofounder, Daniela, by billions of dollars.
The prospectus highlights the AI company’s rapid growth over the past year, fuelled by Big Tech’s breakneck spending that has driven a rally in AI stocks, while raising concerns about lofty valuations and rising debt.
The company also flagged growing risks from AI technology, underscoring concerns over its potential to cause harm, which had led Amodei to call for a slowdown in development of advanced models.
Anthropic’s net loss in the first half of 2026 widened sharply to $80.7 billion, largely due to a rise in the fair value of bonds convertible into the company’s shares. Revenue in the period was about $16.3 billion.
Anthropic’s revenue grew a staggering 1,368% in the three months ended June 30 from a year earlier, but the company warned in the prospectus that the revenue growth rate could decline over time and fluctuate.
The IPO, which is anticipated to be before Thanksgiving in the US, late next month, is expected to establish Anthropic, the AI lab behind the viral Claude models, as a benchmark for how Wall Street values leading AI companies, including rival OpenAI.
The IPO push comes despite a once-busy autumn listing calendar thinning out as choppy markets prompt companies to delay their offerings. Analysts said that would give Anthropic access to a deep pool of capital to fund its costly AI ambitions.
Growing investor unease with the debt-fuelled AI investment boom has led to a global selloff in AI and tech stocks, as they start to doubt whether the trillions spent on data centres, chips and computing capacity will generate fast returns to support lofty valuations. Higher borrowing costs and rising bond yields have added to their caution.
However, tech companies are still hungry for cash. Meta is aiming to raise up to $95 billion in its largest-ever equity fundraising, while SpaceX has inked a $40-billion deal with Apollo to lease AI chips and server hardware.
