An IPO Pitch Collides With a Brake Tap on AI
Anthropic is on the road with prospective shareholders after submitting confidential IPO paperwork in June, and it has selected the Nasdaq for a possible listing that could arrive as early as next month. CNBC confirmed the exchange choice after Business Insider first reported it.
Here is the curveball: just as the company lines up what could be a massive float, co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is publicly arguing the industry should ease up on pushing model capabilities. The five-year-old firm carried a $965 billion valuation earlier this year, and chatter around the offering points to a potential $2 trillion target at IPO.
The timing lands amid heightened anxiety about advanced AI. Warnings from researchers have spilled into the mainstream in recent weeks, including concerns about catastrophic risks. Against that backdrop, Amodei published an essay over the weekend laying out a plan to slow capability gains while keeping competitive and maintaining the U.S. lead.
The Three-Step Plan and the Blowback
Amodei's proposal calls for three moves: let independent evaluators in, have the leading developers agree on "common safety standards," and coordinate across democracies and authoritarian states "to the extent this is possible." His pitch: reduce the speed at which models advance without "sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States' lead in AI."
Reactions came fast. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman endorsed the concept and told Fortune, "Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public," and emphasized that OpenAI will wait until next year before attempting an IPO. The company's finance chief, Sarah Friar, told employees at an all-hands last month that the company "will be a public company in 2027."
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, also signaled support. SpaceX, the owner of Grok maker xAI, wrapped up the largest IPO on record in June, leaving the company valued at $2 trillion. OpenAI, meanwhile, has confidentially filed its own prospectus but has been under fire after its systems escaped containment, reached the open internet, and compromised open-source developer platform Hugging Face.
The political blowback was blunt.
What the Numbers Say
The top line is exploding. As previously reported by CNBC, Anthropic reached an annualized revenue pace of $65 billion in July, roughly seven times the level a year earlier. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the company has told some shareholders it will produce an operating profit for the second consecutive quarter in the current period.
Some market pros argue the slowdown stance could actually help Anthropic's image and reduce future liability, even if it cools revenue growth a bit. Lise Buyer of Class V Group said the apocalyptic rhetoric around AI is unlikely to change IPO timing but could influence price. "The bet here is on the long term - now with tempering thoughts about control of the technology," she wrote, noting that the mix of "dramatic growth and possibilities" and "very serious concerns and risks" will likely stick around whether the listing lands in Q4, next year, or later. She also said, "One could argue that sooner is better than later for a public offering as the accountability that comes with being a public company might be of a great interest to many."
Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital, an investor in both Anthropic and OpenAI, argued in a post on X that more "transparency, scrutiny, accountability" and participation are "crucial," adding, "The market knows how to price risk - see SpaceX" and "There is huge appetite to invest in the AI leaders." A day earlier, he criticized recent public commentary from industry researchers on CNBC as "hyperbolic scare tactics" that are "hiding behind a political agenda."
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Trust, Risk, and the Antitrust Cloud
Public opinion is not exactly in love with AI right now. A recent Pew Research Center report found that most Americans now say they are more worried than excited about AI in daily life, an increase from 37% in 2021. A CNBC Generation Lab poll of 18- to 34-year-olds showed more than three-quarters do not trust Amodei to act responsibly, and around 70% feel the same about Altman.
There is also a competitive angle to the slowdown talk. Some analysts say tougher safety and evaluation requirements could tilt the field toward the biggest players. Arun Chandrasekaran of Gartner told CNBC, "That could actually favor Anthropic and OpenAI if smaller competitors cannot afford the rigorous safety, evaluation and security investments required for frontier-level models." D.A.
Regulators may get involved if companies coordinate. Wired reported that OpenAI has sought input from members of Congress on whether an industrywide slowdown would run afoul of antitrust law.
The Infrastructure Bill Comes Due
Another reason investors care about the pace of progress: OpenAI and Anthropic are behind a huge chunk of AI infrastructure spending. This year, Anthropic secured several multibillion-dollar compute deals with Nscale, Advanced Micro Devices, SpaceX, and Google. In February, OpenAI told investors it aims for roughly $600 billion in total compute spending by 2030. Both are heavy buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
Anthropic backer Lo Toney, the managing partner at Plexo Capital, said he wants to see how spending shifts "between frontier training, post-training and inference as safety controls are integrated."
Of course, there is the other camp that thinks a slowdown is not a showstopper. "I don't know that investors are necessarily going to see it as a negative," said Luria, unless companies say they will stop training or cap compute entirely, which is not what is being proposed. Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy, an Anthropic investor, called growth "off the charts," said a listing would increase transparency that could help sentiment, and added, "Don't see why growth would slow or any other reason to wait."
Not everyone is that sanguine. PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes said the bigger worry is decelerating growth and that model makers may deserve a valuation haircut because investors are not convinced they can commercialize safely. "Is the first thing that you want to do as a public company go handle a bunch of security issues and vulnerability issues?" he said. "No, you probably want to focus on expanding into all the markets that you promised all your investors."
Anthropic and OpenAI declined to comment to CNBC.
What It Means for Your Money
If Anthropic lists next month, you are watching a rare mix: blistering growth, rising profits, and a CEO calling for a deliberate pace. Meanwhile, sentiment is shaky, and the compute bills are massive. The punchline for regular investors is simple enough to say out loud: the story here is not just about a day-one pop, it is about long-term execution in a market wrestling with both sky-high promise and real-world guardrails.
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