Anthropic preps for initial public stock offering in major step for AI company
Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, filed papers Monday to prepare for a potential initial public offering (IPO), taking a major step toward a listing on public markets.
The long-anticipated move comes months after Anthropic said it had "confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1" with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Monday's filing touts AI as "one of the most consequential technologies in human history. If managed well, it could rapidly accelerate scientific innovation, greatly increase economic growth rates, bring cures for major diseases within reach, and solve problems that have resisted generations of human effort."
At the same time, "To build AI is to harness cognition itself, and anything so powerful can be used for ill as well as good," Anthropic's filing says, noting that AI "can be misused by those who wish to do harm" and "may also behave autonomously in ways we (and our users) do not intend -- as illustrated by recent high-profile cybersecurity incidents. Losing control of sufficiently powerful AI systems could be a global security threat of the first order."
"We consider it our personal responsibility to help the world understand these risks, to prevent or mitigate them when they arise from our AI models, and to work with governments and the rest of the industry to address them at a societal level," the filing says.
Public concern over the possible risks posed by AI has grown in recent months, resulting in part from AI-related security incidents disclosed by Anthropic as well as the high-profile resignation of a researcher at the company.
In July, Anthropic said a review of more than 140,000 testing runs of its AI models had unearthed three separate self-directed cyberattacks against other organizations.
Rival companies, including OpenAI, have also revealed AI-related security incidents in recent months.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last month announced a precautionary slowdown of AI development to ensure sufficient risk prevention. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said last month he would dial back the pace of his company's AI development.
Anthropic earned $16.3 billion in revenue over the first six months of this year, growing nearly 14-fold from $1.2 billion in revenue in the same period a year earlier, the company's filing said.
Still, the company reported a net loss of $80.7 billion over the first six months of this year, indicating the scale of its spending over that period.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Editor's note: This story has been updated for clarity.
