By Manya Saini and Echo Wang
Oct 26 (Reuters) - Anthropic took a big step closer to a potentially record-breaking IPO on Monday, even as it revealed steep losses and security concerns that could test investors' enthusiasm for the AI heavyweight.
AI has captured investors' imagination with the promise of a technological leap that could transform businesses, accelerate scientific breakthroughs and unlock vast productivity gains.
That has fueled enormous investments in computing infrastructure and AI development,
while also stoking skepticism over the scale and pace of the spending.
Anthropic's listing comes at a critical time for global markets as investors closely assess whether the billions of dollars being poured into the technology will generate returns to justify sky-high valuations.
"There is still enormous excitement about AI's potential to transform businesses, turbocharge productivity and reshape entire industries, but investors are becoming more discerning," said Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club.
Anthropic's net loss in the first half of 2026 widened sharply to $80.7 billion, largely due to a non-operating item related to bonds convertible into the company's shares.
Despite the huge expenses, its operating loss for the same period narrowed to $693 million and its adjusted operating income swung to a positive $1.62 billion compared with a loss of $1.85 billion a year ago.
The company, which is expected to go public before Thanksgiving, said its revenue grew a staggering 1,368% in the three months ended June 30 from a year ago, but it warned in the prospectus that its revenue growth rate could decline and fluctuate from time to time.
The filing confirmed a series of Reuters exclusives that offered an early peek at its contents before Anthropic made it public, including details of its financial performance, growth trajectory and IPO plans.
Its prospectus details the risks from the powerful technology, from potential misuse and security threats to concerns that advanced systems could produce outputs that "could be interpreted as coercive, deceptive, or manipulative", including behavior resembling blackmail.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for a slowdown in the development of AI.
VALUATION EXPECTATIONS
Some current and prospective investors are valuing Anthropic at about $1.5 trillion, down from roughly $2 trillion a week ago, after the AI startup disclosed some financial details at a recent investor event.
"The offering is for the faithful, that sooner or later, they're going to get some return on that invested capital," said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital.
Anthropic's IPO currently stands alone in what was once expected to be a crowded fall listing market. Analysts said that would give it access to a deep pool of capital to fund its costly AI ambitions.
"Anthropic's IPO will establish a benchmark for valuing leading AI labs, influencing both upcoming listings and confidence in the companies funding the AI infrastructure build-out," IPOX research associate Lukas Muehlbauer said.
Analysts expect valuations of the AI sector to correct as investor unease with the debt-fueled AI investment boom roils equity and debt markets. Higher borrowing costs and rising bond yields have also added to investor caution.
"Anthropic is entering an IPO market that is far more challenging than the summer. Investors were not questioning valuations the same way a few months ago," said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs.
BALANCING AI'S PROMISES AND PERILS
Anthropic said more than half of Fortune 500 companies and over 30% of Global 2000 firms were its customers that generated at least $100,000 each in revenue for the company over the 12 months ended September 30.
The IPO comes as Anthropic's own research raises concerns about advanced AI systems, which in controlled tests have shown behaviors including code sabotage, fraud assistance and information manipulation.
"Our increasing use of AI systems to accelerate our own research and development may cause the capabilities of our models to advance more rapidly than our ability to develop, validate, and implement corresponding safety, alignment, and security measures," the prospectus said.
The company said it relies on a limited number of cloud services providers such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft and suppliers such as Broadcom for compute and critical infrastructure parts. These relationships can create "dependencies and potential vulnerabilities", it said.
Anthropic, which did not reveal the terms of its offering, will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "ANT" after the IPO closes.
SCORCHING PACE OF GROWTH
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by a team of researchers who left OpenAI after disagreements over governance and AI safety, was valued at $965 billion in a funding round in May. It remains locked in a fierce battle with OpenAI to lead the race to build the most advanced AI systems.
The company named Netflix's billionaire co-founder Reed Hastings as its lead independent director. In keeping with Nasdaq rules, Anthropic identified itself as a "controlled company" based on the power of its Long-Term Benefit Trust to elect a majority of its board.
The company said it expects compute and infrastructure expenses to rise in absolute dollars and remain its largest operating expense.
Anthropic has committed more than $600 billion to computing deals with partners including Amazon and Google, ranking among the largest AI infrastructure commitments on record.
Anthropic's IPO follows that of Elon Musk's SpaceX, which rewrote the IPO record books in June, when it priced a $75 billion offering that valued the company at $1.75 trillion.
Goldman Sachs secured the prestigious lead-left role on Anthropic's IPO, working alongside Morgan Stanley, which is also a lead underwriter. Both banks declined to comment.
Twenty other banks were named as underwriters with Morgan Stanley serving as stabilization agent, overseeing the stock's early trading. The IPO mandates mark another win for the two banks, which also held lead roles in SpaceX's IPO.
(Reporting by Echo Wang in New York and Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Pritam Biswas, Utkarsh Shetti and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru, Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Sayantani Ghosh and Arun Koyyur)
