Anthropic is preparing for a potential IPO, with leaked papers showing a $2 trillion valuation. The company reported a $42 billion net loss in 2025 despite a 12-fold revenue surge. Anthropic warned that its AI models could pose existential risks to humanity, including potential security problems and unexpected autonomous behaviors.

Synopsis

Anthropic is preparing for a potential IPO as its revenue surges, but losses and infrastructure commitments balloon. The AI company has also warned of existential risks from advanced models and highlighted its heavy reliance on Amazon and Google.

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Anthropic is heading towards its much-awaited initial public offering, with leaked IPO prospectus papers revealing key details such as ballooning net losses, surging revenue, AI models posing existential risks to humanity and more.

With the market debut, Anthropic would likely become the first major generative AI company to debut on Wall Street, beating OpenAI and Musk’s xAI. Notably, this comes after OpenAI CEO cancelled IPO plans for this year, citing growing concerns over AI safety.

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Anthropic's revenue surges but so do losses

The maker of Claude reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in coming years, according to the prospectus seen by Reuters. While the sharp losses are raising eyebrows, the company also reported a 12-fold surge in revenue to nearly $4.6 billion in 2025.

The IPO could value Anthropic at more than $2 trillion, reflecting the rapid rise of the AI startup lab that only came into existence five years ago. While the optimism remains high, caution is warranted.

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Anthropic warns AI poses risk to humanity

Anthropic listed out major risks posed by the AI models it is creating and selling. It said the nascent technology has the potential for creating “existential risks to humanity”. It added that autonomous AI systems could behave in unexpected ways, create security problems, be used for fraud, or manipulate information. AI can have "self-preserving behaviours," including being able to "resist shutdown," "conceal or manipulate information," and carry out behaviours "resembling blackmail”, CNBC cited the Reuters report.

This comes after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei earlier this month called on AI companies to slow the rate at which they advance model capabilities amid mounting fears of misuse of artificial intelligence. The Anthropic CEO wrote in a post on X that in nearly a year, AI agents "could be capable of taking over the entire internet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage."

Concentration risk: Anthropic’s deep reliance on Amazon, Google

Apart from the AI risks, Anthropic warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with 47% of its 2025 revenue coming through Amazon and Alphabet’s Google Cloud marketplaces, Reuters quoted the IPO papers as saying. Sales through Amazon and Google’s cloud marketplaces amounted to about $2.16 billion last year, or 47% of Anthropic’s annual revenue.

The two technology giants help distribute Anthropic’s Claude AI models and collect customer payments on its behalf, giving them a significant role in the company’s business. Anthropic said it expects consumption-based revenue to account for "the substantial majority" of its revenue for the foreseeable future.

Anthropic paid nearly $351 million in distribution fees to the platforms, meaning the cloud providers collected about 16 cents for every dollar of those sales, a Reuters analysis of the filing indicated. Anthropic records channel partner fees under its "sales, marketing, and partnerships" operating expense line.

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(What's moving Sensex and Nifty Track latest market news, stock tips, Budget 2025, Share Market on Budget 2025 and expert advice, on ETMarkets. Also, ETMarkets.com is now on Telegram. For fastest news alerts on financial markets, investment strategies and stocks alerts, subscribe to our Telegram feeds .)

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