We’ve never seen anything like the Anthropic IPO

By Allison Morrow, CNN

New York (CNN) — Anthropic’s debut on public markets will be unlike any that’s come before it, in ways that amount to either a once-in-a-generation opportunity — or a massive financial gamble, depending on whom you ask.

When the startup behind the Claude AI assistant begins trading as soon as next week, there will be no analog to measure its performance against. The market has simply never seen a dedicated AI model developer go public. It is rare for a business to IPO as a public benefit corporation and, other than SpaceX, it is unheard of for any company to go public with a potential target valuation above $1 trillion.

Anthropic’s IPO, expected to begin marketing to investors this week, is unconventional by almost any measure. The company promised in its pre-IPO regulatory filing that its technology would “bring forth an age of miracles” while simultaneously warning it may doom humanity. Still, the promise of a once-in-a-generation technological revolution (even with 90 pages of warnings and caveats in its more-than-300-page filing) could make Anthropic the biggest IPO in history.

But there are other financial superlatives and quirks — not to mention persistent cold feet about AI on Wall Street — that will keep many investors on the sidelines.

Bills keep coming due

Despite rapid revenue growth, the five-year-old company has had only one quarter of operating profit, and it is on the hook for nearly $900 billion over the next few years — money it has committed to spend on computer power and data center infrastructure.

Anthropic fans have held up its sales growth as a positive indicator of its financial health: The company brought in $17 billion in sales in the most recent quarter, up 1,127% from the same period a year earlier. And in the first nine months of this year, it recorded $33.2 billion in sales, versus just $4.6 billion in all of 2025.

But by Anthropic’s own account, that kind of growth isn’t sustainable over the long term.

“We do not expect our revenue will continue to grow at comparable rates, and we cannot assure you that it will continue to grow at all,” the company said in its pre-IPO prospectus.

At the same time, Anthropic relied on just five customers for a quarter of its sales this year. It didn’t disclose the five, but noted that some of them are also competitors.

That points to a precarious situation in which a handful of companies have outsized control over Anthropic’s future cash flow. Any one of those companies, which may be building its own AI models to compete with Claude, may decide to scale back its own spending or walk away completely at any time. Ideally, investors would want to see a more robust customer base.

Even bullish investors say that so-called concentration risk is worth keeping an eye on.

Paul Marino, chief revenue officer at Themes ETFs, told CNN the relatively small number of major customers “gives me a little bit of concern” because their needs could change on a dime. “It’s something to monitor, but I’m not overly concerned with it because I’m one of those people that believes that AI is the future.”

A chance to cash out

Normally, when a company goes public, insiders can’t simply dump their shares on Day One and cash out — they have to hold on to them, usually for at least three to six months, to prevent the stock price from tanking.

Anthropic’s lock-up schedule may be the most convoluted of any IPO in recent memory. The company opted for a complex, staggered schedule that permits some “non-founder” insiders to sell 10% of their holdings on Day One. The prospectus then lists some 23 dates over the first year when non-founder employees can dump more shares.

Critics see that unorthodox schedule as another red flag, given the roughly $130 billion Wall Street insiders and venture capitalists have already poured into the company.

“It has maxed out private investors, who now need the company to tap public markets to get them their payday,” financial research firm New Constructs wrote in a blog post.

David Trainer, New Constructs’ founder and CEO, added in a call with CNN that he sees the payout to insiders as “a horrific misallocation of capital.”

“We’re going to make a lot of people rich… that’s value that is taken away from public investors who are effectively giving them that from their own pockets, from their retirement accounts.”

The concentration risk isn’t limited to Anthropic’s business customers. Critics also point to the concentration of power in the company’s special ownership structure, which gives its seven founders a majority of shareholder voting power. That novel approach has become more common in tech companies in recent years, but nonetheless raises concerns from some government officials.

“We’re seeing a very worrisome trend of disempowerment to shareholders and all the balance of power tipping towards management,” New York City comptroller Mark Levine told Bloomberg News.

Testing the AI trade

Anthropic’s investor roadshow this week could hardly come at a worse moment for AI sentiment on Wall Street and beyond. Last week, AI-linked stocks tumbled on investors’ concerns that Democratic wins in Congress and state governments would slow the data center buildout. Americans’ sentiment about AI safety is in the gutter. And on Monday, Nvidia shares fell 5% after CEO Jensen Huang admitted to having an affair as his company announced it would be investigating him over foreign intelligence concerns.

Anthropic, which declined to comment to CNN on its IPO plans, appears to be pressing ahead despite the turmoil. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the company had meetings lined up with key investors this week and plans to list its shares Thursday or Friday next week, citing people familiar with the matter.

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