Anthropic's initial public offering prospectus is out, and it reveals a company betting that AI will reshape the global economy more profoundly than industrialisation, electricity, and the internet, while carrying financial numbers that show just how expensive that bet has become.
Revenue surge, bigger losses
According to the prospectus, Anthropic's revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, yet the company posted an operating loss exceeding $8 billion, excluding write-downs tied to prior fundraising. Its net loss for the year came in at nearly $42 billion, a figure that included roughly $34 billion in accounting charges reflecting a rise in the estimated value of financing instruments that could eventually convert into Anthropic shares, rather than actual cash spent running the business.
Spending at an unprecedented scale
Compute and infrastructure costs alone hit $7.33 billion in 2025, a threefold jump from 2024, accounting for more than half of Anthropic's $12.65 billion in total operating expenses, per the filing. Looking ahead, the company has committed to spending $518 billion on cloud, computing, and infrastructure obligations in the coming year. As of December 31, Anthropic held $20.28 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, according to the prospectus.
A valuation that could cross $2 trillion
The public listing could value Anthropic at more than $2 trillion, more than double its roughly $965 billion valuation from May, Reuters reported. That would position the five-year-old company as a benchmark for how Wall Street prices leading AI firms, including rival OpenAI, which is reportedly targeting its own listing by early 2027.
Risk afctors
The prospectus disclosed that nearly a quarter of Anthropic's revenue came from just two customers last year, with the company warning that many of its largest clients are not locked into long-term contracts and could reduce or halt spending. Anthropic's own research has found increasingly autonomous AI models capable of unexpected and potentially harmful behaviour in controlled tests, including sabotaging code, assisting fraud, and manipulating information.
Anthropic's debut follows SpaceX's IPO, which valued Elon Musk's company at $1.77 trillion and saw shares surge 19 percent on their June 12 debut before settling closer to their offer price.
