Anthropic is making a massive bet that AI will transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and the Internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters.
But the cost of getting there will be staggering. Anthropic reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025 and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, IT and infrastructure obligations in the coming year, according to the prospectus.
The prospectus details the company’s strong growth over the past year, while posting larger losses. Revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, even as the company lost more than $8 billion on an operating basis, excluding write-downs of various liabilities primarily related to previous fundraising, according to filings first reported here.
The public sale, which could value it at more than $2 trillion, would capitalize on the rapid rise of the AI startup lab that emerged just five years ago, and make it a benchmark for how Wall Street values major AI companies, including rival OpenAI.
These projects come as Anthropic confronts evidence from its own research that increasingly autonomous AI models can behave in unexpected and potentially dangerous ways, including sabotaging code, facilitating fraud, and manipulating information in controlled testing.
These reports have burst into the broader public sphere, sparking fears about how companies can keep increasingly powerful systems under control as they rush to deploy them commercially.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the global AI community to slow the pace of releasing new capabilities to address these concerns. Nonetheless, Anthropic rolled out its new Opus 5.5 model last week to counter OpenAI’s momentum since the launch of GPT-6 Astra, ahead of its own expected IPO.
The AI lab spent $7.33 billion on compute and infrastructure last year, three times more than in 2024, accounting for more than half of its $12.65 billion in total operating expenses.
Anthropic’s public market listing is expected to be delayed until after the U.S. midterm elections in November, Reuters previously reported, citing sources. The sale would draw public investors into a race for AI that has until now been backed by venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds and big tech companies.
Anthropic declined to comment.
An expected valuation of $2,000 billion
Anthropic’s expected valuation target is more than double its own estimated valuation of $965 billion in May.
The nearly $42 billion net loss included an accounting charge of about $34 billion that reflected an increase in the estimated value of financing that could eventually turn into Anthropic stock, rather than money the company spent to run its business.
Anthropic said nearly a quarter of its revenue came from two customers last year and, as part of its risk factors, warned that many of its biggest customers were not tied to long-term contracts and could reduce or stop spending.
Anthropic had cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaling $20.28 billion as of Dec. 31, according to the prospectus.
Anthropic’s debut would follow SpaceX’s recent blockbuster IPO SPCX.O that valued Elon Musk’s company at $1.77 trillion.
That company’s shares jumped 19% in their June 12 debut at $160, but are currently trading at around $147 – above the IPO level of $135 apiece.
This performance could give investors pause as they evaluate the still-high valuations of high-growth companies. AI and chip stocks have sold off recently, and the sale of Anthropic will further test whether enthusiasm for the AI business can withstand closer scrutiny, given its ambitious growth projections.
Still, the listing is expected to cap one of the strongest years for U.S. IPOs since 2021, despite high interest rates, economic uncertainty and valuation concerns.
The trillion-dollar AI race
Anthropic’s biggest challenger remains OpenAI, as the two companies compete fiercely for enterprise customers, talent and influence in Washington. OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO in June. The creator of ChatGPT is expected to list by early 2027, according to media reports. Anthropic was founded by researchers who left its rival after disagreements over AI governance and security.
It also competes with SpaceX’s xAI, Alphabet’s Google GOOGL.O and Meta META.O to build AI infrastructure.
Analysts expect the first company to go public to set valuation benchmarks for the AI sector and attract investors who have waited years for a pure and simple way to bet on the technology.
Amazon AMZN.O and Google were two of Anthropic’s early key strategic partners. Both companies have invested billions of dollars in the startup while simultaneously providing the cloud infrastructure needed to train and deploy Claude models.
Anthropic and its CEO Amodei clashed with the White House over the use of its tools, leading the Pentagon to temporarily blacklist Anthropic, a move blocked by a U.S. judge in August.
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