Anthropic PBC has opened a channel with New York City Comptroller Mark Levine after he urged the company in a Wednesday letter to pause its initial public offering plans. He asked Anthropic to wait until it has clearly and completely dealt with the AI governance and safety risks it has previously raised.
Levine also argued that the morally binding safety agreement reached last month among the Trump administration and AI firms, including Anthropic, does not go far enough. A spokesperson for Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment. Levine said he could not describe the substance of his talks with the company.
As comptroller, Levine oversees the city's finances and manages public pension funds totaling in excess of $325 billion in assets. He noted that some of those assets are parked in index-tracking strategies and said they assume "the indexes will rush Anthropic in." He also acknowledged that some argue a delay could itself create a market issue, but said he worries about "going public and then having an incident."
On Bloomberg Television, Levine said Anthropic "does appear they are under pressure from multiple sides right now." He warned, "If they go public and then there is a catastrophic safety incident, beyond, far beyond what we've seen right now, that would be terrible for their stock," and added, "Much better to take a little more time right now and get this done."
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People familiar with the deal say Anthropic is targeting an offering as early as next month, and the raise could match or exceed the sum SpaceX brought in during its record-setting debut. On Wednesday, Anthropic hosted select investors at its headquarters, disclosed $16.8 billion in third quarter revenue, and, per Bloomberg News and people familiar, achieved profitability on an adjusted basis in the period.
Last month, in an essay, Amodei urged industry and governments to collaborate to slow the rapid progress of AI models and to confront risks including serious economic disruption, potential loss of control, and the misuse of AI for cyberattacks and terrorism. The bottom line: if indexes add Anthropic quickly, as Levine said they assume, index-tracking funds could see exposure soon after listing, shaping how and when your portfolio meets this name.
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