Anthropic, the US developer of the Claude chatbot, warned on Monday, October 26, that artificial intelligence could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity" as it released details of its planned US stock market listing. The company will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol ANT, becoming the first fully AI-focused company to go public.
In its pre-listing filing, Anthropic said advanced AI systems built and run without proper safeguards, oversight and security could pose such risks, particularly if misused, replicated, weaponised or allowed to operate with a high degree of autonomy. Across roughly 90 pages of risk factors, it also flagged its reliance on a small group of cloud providers, heavily booked Taiwanese chipmakers and data centres concentrated in the US.
Big revenue, bigger losses
The filing shows revenue of $16.3 billion in the first half of the year against losses of more than $80.7 billion. Anthropic has not yet disclosed how many shares it will sell, their price range or a listing date, but according to sources its valuation is expected to exceed that of SpaceX, whose record listing this summer came at an initial valuation of about $1.8 trillion.
The company said it would keep making forward investments "that may seem irresponsibly large at first glance", aiming to be "bold but sane". It also argued that AI could sharply accelerate progress in biology and medicine, potentially helping find cures for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's.
Anthropic was founded five years ago by chief executive Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei and five others. Rival OpenAI's listing is, according to sources, now expected early next year. On the same day, the owners of Elvis Presley's music rights sued Anthropic, accusing it of using hundreds of his songs to train Claude.