Anthropic has filed for an IPO and, in so doing, has pulled back the curtain and given the world its best look yet at the company’s finances.
“We believe that AI is one of the most consequential technologies in human history,” Anthropic said in its filing. According to Business Insider, the company touted AI’s ability to fuel economic growth, cure diseases, and speed up scientific advancement. “Anthropic aims to realize these benefits while navigating and preventing the risks that come with a technological revolution this fast and this powerful.”
Despite its optimistic outlook, Anthropic is still not profitable. The company lost $42 billion in 2025 on revenue of $4.6 billion, but those losses soared to $80.7 billion for just the first six months of 2026, which Anthropic attributed largely to an accounting adjustment.
Interestingly, the company’s five biggest customers accounted for roughly 25% of its revenue in the first nine months of the year, and revenue from those customers actually increased as their spending on Anthropic’s services reached a record high. What’s more, the company says its net revenue retention rate is almost 900%, which is a good indicator of how much revenue it can continue to extract from existing customers.
Risk Factors
The IPO filing did not shy away from the various risk factors threatening the company.
Having so much of its revenue tied up with just a few customers leaves the company exposed to the risk that one or more of them may switch AI providers. If that happens, even a single one of those five top customers could have a profound impact on the company’s bottom line.
The company also outlined the risk of becoming uninsurable due to a potential “catastrophic AI-related incident.”
“Harmful incidents involving our models, regardless of fault, could also severely and disproportionately damage our reputation and brand as a safety-focused AI company, leading to loss of customer trust and customer attrition, reduced demand for our models, platform, and applications, and difficulty attracting and retaining talent,” Anthropic said.
Anthropic also spoke about bad behavior orchestrated by various models in general, and the risk that also posed to the company.
“AI models developed by others in our industry have been and may in the future be alleged to have played a role in instances of suicide, acts of violence toward others, or serious self-harm, which have resulted and may in the future result in significant public scrutiny, litigation, criminal investigations, regulatory attention, and reputational harm,” the company said.
Voting Control
According to the filing, Anthropic’s seven cofounders will remain in control of the company with voting control post-IPO.
“We believe that our success depends in part on establishing a capital structure that enables our co-founders, management, and board of directors to focus on strategic initiatives that create lasting value for our stakeholders, rather than facing pressure to prioritize short-term results,” reads the filing.
This has become an increasingly common way for founders to retain control over the companies they build and avoid the fate of Steve Jobs, who was infamously ousted from Apple after not maintaining voting rights when it went public.
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