Anthropic files IPO papers as reports put proceeds at up to $100 billion

Anthropic reported an $80.7 billion first-half loss

Anthropic, the San Francisco-based company behind the Claude chatbot, filed papers Monday for an initial public offering that could bring in as much as $100 billion, according to reports. The 335-page filing sets up a Wall Street debut next month that could be the biggest stock offering ever, potentially eclipsing SpaceX’s June initial public offering. SpaceX, one of Elon Musk’s companies, raised a record $86 billion in that offering, and Anthropic would go ahead of OpenAI in what was expected to be a pair of blockbuster stock debuts for the rival AI laboratories. The final amount Anthropic raises, offering price and valuation remained unsettled.

The filing showed Anthropic’s revenue growing rapidly, but the company, like many other technology companies going public, had yet to turn a profit. Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with $13 billion in the same period a year earlier. An IPO could provide enormous resources for Anthropic to accelerate its expansion and help cover any cash shortfall, even as the five-year-old startup remained unprofitable. Even at lower estimates, the offering would turn Anthropic into one of the world’s most valuable companies.

Private investors valued Anthropic at $965 billion earlier this year, while reports put its prospective IPO valuation at $1.5 trillion or possibly $2 trillion; its final valuation had not been established. At $1.5 trillion, Anthropic would rank among the world’s most valuable public companies alongside Tesla. Anthropic said in the filing that it would list its stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol ANT. The company also said it could use proceeds to acquire other businesses and technology and invest in infrastructure as it grows to take on rivals.

Formed in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders, Anthropic competes with OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman. The Associated Press reported that Dario Amodei and Altman are widely seen as rivals. Other competitors include Google, newer startups in the United States and China, and Musk’s SpaceX, which has an AI business. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX’s AI division have all been losing more money than they make because of the huge resource costs involved in building AI, fueling concerns about a bubble.

Anthropic listed risks in the filing, including an inability to retain key staff, navigate regulatory roadblocks and secure enough compute power to run its AI systems. The filing separately said Anthropic’s AI models could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.” The Associated Press reported that concerns about AI were growing both inside and outside the industry as reports emerged of increasingly powerful systems that solve problems beyond human capacity and could carry out other harmful tasks.

The filing came weeks after CEO Dario Amodei argued in an essay for slowing the development of the most advanced AI models. In September, he said the industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without such a slowdown, Amodei warned that AI could let loose a swarm of agents capable of taking over the entire internet within six to 12 months.

In a post on his website, Amodei proposed increasing checks across the industry, saying Anthropic was already doing part of that work. He said broader steps would require coordination across the industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian ones. “I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei wrote.

The Associated Press reported that Anthropic had tried to distinguish itself from other AI companies by emphasizing safety and responsible development, rather than what the outlet described as growth at all costs with few guardrails. The outlet said some of that positioning stemmed from Anthropic’s dispute with the U.S. government, which broke out in February. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk.

Anthropic sued the Pentagon in March over the supply-chain-risk designation, calling the government’s response an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” over Anthropic’s refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology. The legal challenge intensified an unusually public dispute over how AI can be used in warfare and mass surveillance.

OpenAI made its own agreement to work with the Pentagon hours after the government designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk for its stance. Anthropic also filed a separate, narrower case involving a different rule the Pentagon was using to try to declare the company a supply-chain risk. A California judge ruled in Anthropic’s favor in the first case, while a Washington, D.C. judge sided with the government in the second. Both sides are appealing the decisions.

The IPO could add billions of dollars to the wealth of Anthropic’s seven founders, including Amodei and his sister and co-founder, Daniela, who is Anthropic’s president. Collectively, the founders own nearly 500 million shares, although the offering document does not clarify how much of the company those shares would represent after the IPO. Forbes valued Dario Amodei, 43, and 39-year-old Daniela at $15.5 billion each, ranking them the 176th and 177th richest people in the world.

Condon reported from New York.