Anthropic’s march toward the public markets began quietly in June, when it confidentially filed IPO paperwork shortly after OpenAI did the same. OpenAI later delayed its own listing plans, leaving Anthropic positioned to move first in the race to test Wall Street’s appetite for frontier AI.¹

On Monday, the Claude maker made the process official, filing an S-1 for a proposed Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT. The company has not yet set either the number of shares or a price range—an important reminder that the spectacle is not yet a sale.²

The filing offered investors a jarring set of numbers. Anthropic reported $16.3 billion in first-half 2026 revenue, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier, while its operating loss narrowed to $693 million. Its headline net loss was $80.7 billion, however, largely because of noncash accounting adjustments linked to convertible debt. The company also cautioned that it “may not achieve or sustain profitability in the future.”³

That tension runs through the prospectus. Anthropic is growing fast, but its AI ambitions demand staggering infrastructure outlays: reported commitments include up to $120.5 billion for SpaceX GPU capacity by 2029, alongside tens of billions of dollars in agreements with Microsoft, Google and Amazon. Anthropic argues AI could accelerate science, growth and disease cures, yet says it must navigate a revolution “this fast and this powerful” differently from a purely profit-maximizing company.⁴

Its answer is control. The seven co-founders’ LLC will retain 50.1% of voting power, while the Long-Term Benefit Trust can appoint most directors. Supporters can read that as a shield for safety; public shareholders may see limited influence over a company that itself warns advanced systems could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”³

The IPO, then, is more than a financing event. It is a referendum on whether a safety-first lab can remain safety-first after it invites the market inside.