Anthropic asks 2 trillion for AI that can ‘threaten humanity’

Anthropic is gearing up for one of the biggest IPOs ever. According to those involved in the IPO, the creator of Claude can aim for a valuation of more than 2 trillion dollars.

But it is precisely in the prospectus with which it must convince investors that there is a special warning. Anthropic writes that its own technology could potentially cause “existential risks to humanity.”

And that is by no means the only risk that investors have to deal with.

Anthropic spends nearly a third of the comprehensive S1 document on risk factors, according to the Financial Times.

This includes scenarios in which increasingly advanced AI models can manipulate, blackmail or display other unpredictable behaviour.

CEO Dario Amodei also warned at the UN Security Council last week that AI may pose a threat to humanity. He even mentioned AI as one of the most important security issues in the world.

Remarkably, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk have also supported proposals to better align the development of the most advanced models and strengthen security measures.

For investors, there are also much more concrete financial risks. Anthropic posted nearly $4.6 billion in sales last year, twelve times as much as a year earlier.

However, this was offset by an operating loss of more than $8 billion. The operating costs amounted to almost 13 billion dollars, mainly due to the enormous amount of computing power required to train and run models.

This once again shows how capital-intensive the AI race has become.

And the bill gets even bigger. According to the prospectus, Anthropic has approximately $518 billion in future commitments for cloud capacity, computing power and infrastructure.

This immediately makes the IPO a test for the broader AI market. Investors need to determine how much value they want to attribute to extremely rapid growth, compared to hundreds of billions of dollars in future investments.

There is also a different risk in the business model. According to the FT, almost a quarter of sales last year came from only two customers.

If one large customer leaves or spends less, this can immediately have major consequences.

Yet Anthropic is growing at lightning speed. According to the prospectus, sales in the second quarter of this year amounted to 11.5 billion dollars and the company is on course for a second quarter in a row with adjusted operating profit.

This creates a special IPO. Anthropic sells investors one of the fastest growing technology companies in the world. But at the same time warns that the same technology can cause enormous financial and social risks.