Anthropic Readies Public IPO Filing as Draft S‑1 Lays Bare $80B Loss

Anthropic is on the verge of the most consequential step in its five-year history. According to Yahoo Finance, which cited three people familiar with the plans, the Claude developer is preparing to make its S-1 registration statement public as soon as Friday, October 23. If it goes ahead, the filing would start the clock on an offering that Wall Street expects to be the biggest initial public offering on record.

The timing matters. Anthropic has not confirmed a date, and the company has already let one target slip. But the drip of leaked financials over the past week has given investors, rivals and regulators their clearest look yet at what it costs to compete at the frontier of AI.

Why the public filing is the real starting gun

Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1. A confidential filing lets a company work through SEC comments in private, but it cannot stay hidden forever. Under SEC rules, the registration materials must be public at least 15 calendar days before the formal investor roadshow begins.

That arithmetic explains the urgency. PYMNTS reported that Anthropic hopes to begin trading before Thanksgiving, which requires the document to land on EDGAR by late October. Earlier this month, reports said the listing had already moved from October to November after the draft prospectus leaked.

What the draft prospectus reportedly shows

The Wall Street Journal reviewed a draft of the filing, and its figures, republished on October 20, are staggering in both directions:

• Revenue: $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier.
• Net loss: $80.7 billion for the half, of which roughly $72 billion was a non-cash accounting charge tied to convertible notes and other financing instruments.
• Compute spending: about $9 billion in the first six months, versus $7.3 billion for all of 2025.
• Commitments: around $450 billion in cloud compute agreements over the next decade, including about $111 billion with Google Cloud, $110 billion with AWS and $31 billion with Microsoft.
• Customer concentration: roughly 20% of first-half revenue came from just two customers.

The draft also reportedly contemplates up to $750 billion in compute spending in the coming years once deals still under negotiation are counted. Anthropic told the SEC it had sought more capacity than the hyperscalers were willing to provide, pushing it toward third-party data center projects.

More recent numbers point to accelerating momentum. Anthropic reportedly told investors that third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, up from $11.5 billion in the second quarter, and that it is profitable on an adjusted basis, according to the Financial Times as cited by Yahoo Finance.

The valuation question

Anthropic's last private round in May valued it at $965 billion. Public-market expectations now center on roughly $2 trillion, with a raise of up to $100 billion, per Reuters reporting cited by Yahoo Finance. That would eclipse SpaceX's June listing as the largest IPO ever.

Not every investor is buying the headline number. PYMNTS noted that some are weighing a valuation closer to $1.2 trillion, and the backdrop is shaky: South Korean data center provider Elice fell 32% in its trading debut this month, and Nvidia-backed Firmus Grid shelved its own listing. Bloomberg and Business Insider have reported that Anthropic picked Nasdaq, though neither company has confirmed it, according to Leverage Shares' IPO tracker.

Unusual risk factors for an unusual company

Most S-1 risk sections are boilerplate. Anthropic's reportedly is not. Fortune, summarizing the Journal's reporting, said the draft warns that the company's products could be used to hack other organizations or even blackmail customers, alongside a limited customer base. The filing also flags model alignment failures and catastrophic incidents, and notes that damages from a severe AI security event could exceed insurance limits.

Governance details are similarly distinctive. Co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei have each pledged 80% of their personal equity to philanthropy, and the company plans a 5% public benefit fund. Each drew a base salary of roughly $655,000 in 2025.

What it means for the AI industry

For the broader market, Anthropic is a referendum on the AI boom itself. PYMNTS described the offering as a key test of investor appetite for artificial intelligence, and the stakes extend well beyond one company. OpenAI, once expected to list this year, is now projected to go public in early 2027 and is meanwhile raising private capital, with the Financial Times reporting that some backers would rather wait for Anthropic's debut.

A public S-1 would replace leaks with audited numbers and give everyone a common set of facts. Until it appears on EDGAR, the figures above remain reported rather than filed, and the listing date is still unset. Expect the next few days to decide whether Anthropic's November debut stays on track.