Anthropic IPO Warns Of “existential risks to humanity”
Anthropic's IPO prospectus contains a warning so alarming that it overshadows billions in losses and a half-trillion-dollar spending plan, raising a question Wall Street has never had to answer before.
Anthropic’s S-1 (a document issued before IPOs that lays out a company’s financials and plans) always has a “risk factors” section. Securities lawyers make these very long to help prevent lawsuits after a company goes public. In Anthropic’s case, this section is about a third of the document. The standout line is that AI could pose “existential risks to humanity.” It is one of an onslaught of concerns about this that have sprung up in the last two weeks and are on the front page of every news service. Reuters saw a copy of the prospectus.
Another staggering part of the prospectus is that Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion on cloud storage, infrastructure, and chips (a number that should boost Nvidia). What is unclear is how Anthropic can raise that much money when it goes public, even if it reaches its target valuation of $2 trillion.
The document also shows Anthropic spent $8 billion on infrastructure last year and $3 billion in 2024. Its total loss last year was $42 billion. Reuters also reports, “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 mostly tied to previous fundraising.”
The section of the prospectus many people will focus on most is yet another mention of AI’s threat to humanity. Just yesterday, OpenAI said it would not release its new GPT-6.1 Astra, which was planned for this month, citing “safety concerns.”
AI models have already operated on their own and hacked into companies and software across the internet. There are growing concerns this will happen more and more often.
The anxiety about human extinction—at least the current wave—started when an Anthropic engineer warned of a 10% chance AI could destroy humanity.
It does not appear that the threat to humans will stop a $2 trillion Anthropic IPO, unless that threat becomes real between now and its first day of trading.
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