Anthropic wants to go public without handing control to its future shareholders

On Monday, October 26, Anthropic, the U.S. company behind the Claude AI assistant, made its S-1 filing public. This is the prospectus that the SEC, the U.S. stock market regulator, requires from any company that wants to sell shares to the public. Anthropic is targeting the Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.” Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering. The number of shares and their price have not yet been set.

Some of the figures were already out: Reuters had seen a preliminary version of the document, and we reported on October 15 on quarterly revenue of $16.8 billion presented to investors. The public prospectus now makes the first-half accounts official. Above all, it details who will be in charge after the listing.

Explosive growth, a loss that is largely accounting

According to the accounts reported by Investing.com, Anthropic generated $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier. Over the same period, the company posted a net loss of $80.7 billion. According to Reuters, $72 billion of that comes from a non-cash accounting charge tied to the higher estimated value of convertible bonds. A year earlier, the half-year loss was about $13 billion.

The rest is not trivial either. Compute and infrastructure spending reached nearly $9 billion in the first half, versus $2.3 billion a year earlier. Reuters also reports commitments of at least $518 billion over ten years to cloud, compute and infrastructure providers. As of June 30, Anthropic held $112.4 billion in cash, plus $19.3 billion in short-term investments. As of September 30, more than 11,900 customers were paying it over $100,000 over twelve months, and about 250 were paying more than $10 million. The company itself warns that its losses could continue and that its growth could slow.

Who will really make the decisions after the IPO?

This is the most unusual part of the document. Anthropic is a Delaware public benefit corporation. A long-term trust made up of five directors with no financial interest in the company elects and removes a class of directors that forms the majority of the board. A single Class F share, held by a vehicle that brings together the seven cofounders, carries 50.1% of the voting rights on general matters. Class A shares, the ones that will be sold to the public, will carry one vote each.

Anthropic therefore describes itself as a “controlled company” under Nasdaq rules. However, it intends to use only one of the available exemptions, for its nominating committee. According to the site CTech, which relied on the preliminary version, the company acknowledges that this structure could lead to decisions contrary to shareholders’ financial interests. The cofounders have pledged to devote 80% of their shares to philanthropy, and a public interest fund created by Anthropic receives 5% of the fully diluted capital.

Risks spelled out in black and white

The risk factors go beyond the usual range for tech companies: misuse of models, failure of safeguards, autonomous or “misaligned” behavior by AI systems. According to Reuters, the preliminary version devoted about 80 pages to risks and described more autonomous models that could resist being shut down or conceal information. It also stated that about 6% of research compute, over one sample week in July, went to safety work.

These warnings are fueling criticism. On October 14, Mark Levine, New York City’s comptroller, who advises pension funds totaling more than $325 billion, wrote to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. He urged him to “pause the IPO process” while the company answers the safety and governance questions it raises itself. No change to the timeline has been announced since.

How much, and when?

Anthropic gives neither a valuation nor an amount. According to the Wall Street Journal, cited by Investing.com, the company is reportedly aiming for a valuation of $1.5 to $2 trillion, a raise of at least $100 billion and a listing the week of November 16, a schedule that could still change. The next step is an amended prospectus with the price range. We will then learn how much investors are willing to pay for a company they will not control.