Anthropic Pushes Its IPO to November as Investors Eye a $2 Trillion Valuation

The highly anticipated public debut of the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic took an unexpected turn when its confidential prospectus was leaked ahead of its initial public offering. That IPO date was originally anticipated for October, but it has reportedly shifted to November.

The AI giant is expected to fetch a jaw-dropping $2 trillion valuation, about double the $965 billion valuation set in May of this year. It would also exceed the lofty $1.8 trillion valuation achieved earlier this year by Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX.

Before investors decide to jump into Anthropic's IPO, it's best to carefully examine the company's prospectus, which promises plenty of twists given the details reported so far.

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Anthropic's spectacular growth

The arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022 immediately made OpenAI a key player in the artificial intelligence sector. Yet the generative AI giant lost several staff members who went on to found Anthropic. Those include Dario Amodei, who would become CEO of the new company. What set Anthropic apart from OpenAI was its focus on the enterprise market and AI tools to accelerate software coding.

The approach appears to have galvanized incredible growth. The leaked prospectus points to Anthropic's 2025 revenue soaring 12-fold over 2024 to $4.6 billion.

However, the company is bleeding cash with 2025's net loss totaling $42 billion. That may be nothing compared to future costs. Anthropic reportedly plans to spend over half a trillion dollars in the coming years as it builds out the computing infrastructure needed to deliver increasingly powerful AI models.

The unusual risks of investing in Anthropic

At the same time that the company is constructing more potent AI, Dario Amodei has warned that doing so without restraint can create catastrophic dangers. Amodei believes one of the risks is recursive self-improvement, a process where AI can build better versions of itself independently. According to Amodei, "Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems."

Every public company lists risk factors for investing in its stock. Recursive self-improvement leading to uncontrolled AI takes this to another level. With Anthropic, could a risk potentially be the end of humanity? According to a former Anthropic researcher, who quit the company this year, that's certainly a possibility. I don't want to imagine Anthropic's liability if its AI went out of control and caused harm.

A more mundane risk is that the company's prospectus revealed a quarter of the AI giant's revenue comes from just two customers, and many of its largest clients lack long-term contracts. If any of these customers depart, Anthropic's income could collapse, and so would its stock.

Given what's been revealed so far, I will certainly read Anthropic's prospectus with great care when it's publicly available before deciding to invest. After all, that investment could be contributing to my own demise.

Robert Izquierdo has positions in Space Exploration Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.