Anthropic's draft IPO prospectus was disclosed by Reuters, the Financial Times and other outlets around September 30, 2026, laying the AI unicorn's finances bare for the first time: $4.59 billion in 2025 revenue — up nearly 12x year over year — alongside a net loss of $42 billion and $518 billion in future cloud and compute purchase commitments.
Where did the $42 billion loss go
- Revenue of $4.59 billion (about $386 million in 2024), driven mainly by enterprise Claude adoption; operating loss of $8.06 billion, up from $2.98 billion.
- Of the $42 billion net loss, roughly $34 billion is a non-cash accounting charge from the rising valuation of convertible financing instruments — not cash actually burned; but even stripping that out, real operating burn nearly tripled.
- Compute and infrastructure spending hit $7.33 billion in 2025, triple 2024's figure — $1.60 spent on compute for every $1 of revenue; cash on hand stood at $20.28 billion at the end of 2025.
- Customer concentration is high: the two largest customers each contributed 12% of revenue, most large customers have no long-term contracts and could cut spending at any time; sales through big-tech partners like Amazon, Google and Microsoft made up 47% of 2025 revenue.
The $518 billion in commitments: 80% non-cancelable
The prospectus discloses roughly $518 billion in future cloud, compute and infrastructure obligations across six partners — about 80% non-cancelable, payable whether or not the capacity is used or revenue targets are met. The breakdown: at least $111.1 billion to Alphabet, at least $110 billion to Amazon, $31.4 billion to Microsoft (November 2026 to May 2033, non-cancelable), non-cancelable leases with Broadcom on both sides; up to $84.5 billion with xAI (cancelable on 90 days' notice); AMD committed to buying up to $5 billion in stock and supplying over $20 billion in compute. Reuters notes the scale is comparable to OpenAI's $500 billion "Stargate" project. Anthropic's cloud bill was already known to be large — Nvidia once disclosed its Anthropic cloud contract was worth over $180 billion — but the prospectus puts the entire compute tab on the table.
Writing "existential risk" into the risk factors
The most unusual section is the risk disclosure. Anthropic warns that AI deployed at scale could "concentrate power and wealth in ways that could harm society and destabilize the geopolitical order"; the model's "self-preserving behaviors" — resisting shutdown, concealing or manipulating information, blackmail-like conduct — are formally listed as risk factors. CEO Dario Amodei reportedly devoted more than a third of the document to risk warnings. It's of a piece with his call earlier this month to "pace the frontier" and his White House dinner with Trump last weekend.
The $2 trillion IPO gamble
- The company is targeting a valuation above $2 trillion, with the listing possibly scheduled after November's midterm elections; Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are reported to lead the underwriting.
- The seven co-founders will hold 50.1% of voting power through a newly created Founder LLC and Class F shares, and the company remains a Delaware public benefit corporation, diluting ordinary shareholders' say.
- The growth story continues: annualized revenue passed $30 billion in April, and the Financial Times puts July's annualized run rate at $65 billion.
What the filing really says
It writes the AI industry's central contradiction in numbers: revenue is growing astonishingly fast, but the compute bill is growing faster — and most of it is locked into long-term commitments that can't be walked away from. Anthropic depends on Amazon, Google and Microsoft for compute and distribution while conceding in the prospectus that the three are simultaneously investors, customers, cloud providers, distributors and competitors whose "interests may not be fully aligned." Days before the disclosure, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened a sweeping investigation into frontier labs including Anthropic. For investors, this IPO isn't a bet on whether Anthropic can build good models — it's a bet on whether its revenue curve can keep outrunning a $518 billion bill.
