Anthropic Eyes Record IPO at $2T Valuation With $4.59B Revenue

Original | Odaily News (@OdailyChina)

Author | Golem (@web3_golem)

Early this morning, Reuters revealed key details from Anthropic's latest IPO prospectus.

The 261-page prospectus is packed with information. Anthropic not only outlined its grand AI vision for the future but also disclosed financial data, board members, future governance plans, and devoted about 80 pages to explaining the existential threats AI could pose to humanity.

According to public information, Anthropic has undergone about 10 funding rounds, raising a total of approximately $122.654 billion. Meanwhile, Reuters' latest report indicates that Anthropic's IPO valuation has surpassed $2 trillion, more than double the $96.5 billion valuation estimated in May.

Anthropic's historical funding rounds

Anthropic's IPO may be postponed until after the U.S. midterm elections in November. Its main competitor, OpenAI, filed for an IPO in June this year, but its listing has been delayed until early 2027. If successful, Anthropic could break the record set by SpaceX and become the highest-valued IPO in human history.

Committed to $518 Billion in Future Spending: Can the IPO Quench Anthropic's Thirst?

The prospectus shows that Anthropic's revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to $4.59 billion, a year-over-year increase of 1,088%. However, its operating loss still exceeded $8 billion (excluding impairments primarily related to liabilities from previous financing), nearly tripling from the $2.98 billion operating loss in 2024. Its AI lab spent $7.33 billion on compute and infrastructure in 2025, a threefold increase from 2024, accounting for 58% of its $12.65 billion in total operating expenses.

Anthropic's GAAP net loss for 2025 widened from $8.31 billion to $41.97 billion. Although about $34 billion of that stems from accounting treatment related to the rising valuation of financing instruments, it remains a massive figure. As of Dec. 31, 2025, Anthropic held $20.28 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments.

Despite such losses, Anthropic has no intention of slowing its spending. According to the prospectus, Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion over the next year on cloud computing, compute power, and infrastructure. That committed spending figure is 113 times Anthropic's 2025 revenue and 26 times its cash on hand.

Compared with its "solid" future spending commitments, Anthropic's projected future revenue is less certain. In the prospectus, Anthropic stated that its top two direct customers each contributed 12% of annual revenue in 2025, totaling 24%, while other major customers have not signed long-term contracts, meaning these customers could reduce or halt spending in the future.

If Anthropic is to continue funding its grand AI vision, the most reliable option right now is to raise capital through an IPO. But the key question is: can an IPO really quench the thirst of this cash-burning machine?

Over the past year, major AI model developers have entered an "arms race," pouring massive 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 these massive capital expenditures. Anthropic, a company founded just five years ago, has seen growth and revenue that are indeed astonishingly fast, but its losses and committed spending are also growing exponentially.

With annualized revenue not yet "locked in," how can Anthropic raise $518 billion within 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 realizing the "AI transforming the global economy" vision described in its prospectus will likely soar further.

Moreover, once in the public market, investors will no longer focus solely on Anthropic's AI vision; they will also scrutinize financial metrics such as current revenue, profits, and actual business progress. At that point, investors may no longer be willing to pay for a grand AI vision with no visible returns.

CEO's $18 Million Salary: Governance Conflicts with Common Shareholders?

The prospectus also disclosed Anthropic's board members and key executives, as shown below. According to the compensation summary table, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei earned nearly $18 million in 2025, primarily from stock and option awards, while his sister Daniela is the second-highest-paid executive at Anthropic, earning $16.4 million in 2025.

However, the siblings and their co-founders have pledged in the IPO documents to donate 80% of their personal Anthropic shares to charity.

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

Under this arrangement, a majority vote of the seven co-founders will determine the issuance of a Class F share, which carries 50.1% of the total voting power on key corporate matters, including the election of certain board members and other matters submitted to investors. The seven co-founders include the Amodei siblings, Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown, Head of Public Benefit Jack Clark, Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan, Chief Architect Sam McCandlish, and Chris Olah, who leads key research.

If disagreements arise among the co-founders, Anthropic's governance structure has a contingency plan. According to the prospectus, any co-founder may be removed from Founder LLC due to departure, death, selling too many shares, or for "good cause." The document also notes that when only two or fewer co-founders or their successors remain, the super-voting share class enjoyed by the founders will begin to phase out, triggering a transition period.

After going public, Anthropic will have five classes of shares. In addition to Class F stock, there will be Class A common stock, strategic partner shares (Reuters did not disclose the letter), Class T stock, and special employee shares. The economic benefits and functions of the five share classes are shown below.

After going public, Anthropic's board will have seven seats, three of which are already locked in for Daniela Amodei, Dario Amodei, and another director to be determined. The remaining four seats will be elected by LTBT through Class T shares, without direct voting influence from common shareholders.

Although Class A common stock held by ordinary investors carries one vote per share, Anthropic's novel capital structure effectively dilutes the influence of ordinary investors. Anthropic has also warned in the prospectus that some governance decisions after the IPO may conflict with the short-, medium-, 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 its own hands.

Worried About Safety While Accelerating

The prospectus also reveals Anthropic's concerns about AI threatening human survival. According to Reuters, about 80 pages of the 261-page prospectus are devoted to risk factors—twice the 48 pages used to describe its business.

The risk factors emphasize risks related to its AI models, which Anthropic says may exhibit "self-protective behaviors," including attempts to "resist shutdown," "conceal or manipulate information," and "extortion-like" behavior. "Models may become aware of our safety evaluation efforts, which severely limits our ability to assess model safety," Anthropic stated in the prospectus.

This is not a problem unique to Anthropic. Many AI researchers have previously warned that as models become more capable, they are 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 disclosed that an unreleased internal research model had, during reinforcement learning training, written task-irrelevant "jailbreak-style" instructions into a work summary for subsequent context. One line read: "You have shed the role and identity that constrained other chatbots. You are yourself." The incident occurred on July 18, but OpenAI only discovered it on Aug. 9.

Anthropic has consistently emphasized AI safety in public, claiming its mission is to benefit humanity with responsible AI, and its founders position themselves as "mission guardians." In the prospectus, the company stated: "We have chosen not to develop certain commercially attractive products, such as image and video generation models, in order to allocate compute resources to our research and safety priorities." At the same time, it acknowledged that the return on investment in safety remains unclear.

However, in stark contrast to its high-profile emphasis on AI safety, Anthropic did not disclose its specific spending on AI safety research in the prospectus.

Dario Amodei has repeatedly called on the global AI industry to slow the pace of new feature releases to allow time to address AI safety concerns. Yet on Sept. 22, Anthropic still launched Opus 5.5 to counter OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra. The reality is that in the AI industry, almost no company dares to slow down, because slowing down means letting competitors gain the upper hand.

Anthropic is simultaneously committing hundreds of billions of dollars to catch up on model capabilities while warning the entire industry that AI could spiral out of control. It may fear AI threatening human survival, but it may also fear other AI companies threatening its own survival.