The Anthropic logo. Image: Anthropic
Anthropic has filed publicly for what could be the biggest stock market debut ever, and its paperwork shows the Claude maker’s seven co-founders will keep control of the company long after it lists. The S-1, posted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database on Monday, says Anthropic has applied to list its Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT.
The price range and the number of shares on offer are still blank, so the filing doesn’t yet say how much Anthropic wants to raise or what it thinks it is worth. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley head a long list of underwriters that also includes J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays, Wells Fargo and BofA Securities.
One share, 50.1% of the vote
Anthropic calls its set-up a “novel capital and corporate governance structure”, and it is unlike any other big listing. Just before the offering, the company will issue a single share of a special Class F stock to a company owned by its co-founders, including chief executive Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei. That one share carries 50.1% of the votes on ordinary shareholder matters, including the election of most directors. It has no economic rights.
The founders’ grip lasts until fewer than three of what the filing calls “Continuing Founders” remain for 90 days in a row, or until the share is redeemed. Because of it, Anthropic will be a “controlled company” under Nasdaq’s rules, which lets it skip some of the usual governance requirements.
Alongside that sits the Long-Term Benefit Trust, which holds a Class T share that lets it elect directors who will make up a majority of the board. The trust has five seats, one of them vacant, and its trustees are barred from owning Anthropic shares. Public buyers get Class A stock with one vote each; strategic partners hold Class N shares with no votes, and staff will get a Class E stock that votes only on limited matters.
The numbers, now public
The audited figures match what had been reported from the confidential draft. Revenue went from $41 million in 2023 to $386 million in 2024 and $4.59 billion in 2025, when Anthropic posted a net loss of $41.97 billion.
In the first six months of 2026, revenue reached $16.29 billion, up from $1.16 billion a year earlier, and the net loss was $80.75 billion, as the earlier draft showed. Almost all of that loss, $72.39 billion, is a non-cash charge from the rising value of convertible notes, derivatives and SAFEs as Anthropic’s valuation climbed. The operating loss shrank to $693 million, from $2.14 billion a year earlier.
- Spending: compute and infrastructure cost $8.95 billion in the half, and sales, marketing and partnerships jumped to $3.17 billion from $120 million.
- Customers: more than 11,900 pay Anthropic $100,000 or more a year, more than 1,900 pay $1 million or more, and about 250 pay $10 million or more.
- Cash: $112.4 billion in cash and $19.3 billion in short-term investments at the end of June, after raising $141.1 billion in total.
- Concentration: its top five customers brought in about 25% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026.
Third-quarter revenue is left blank for now. Anthropic told would-be investors this month that it made $16.8 billion between July and September.
“Catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”
The risk factors are blunter than most. Anthropic warns that advanced AI could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”, and adds: “We have observed that our models are contributing to the pace of our own research.” Those risks, it says, will grow if AI systems speed up progress “beyond our ability to evaluate and safeguard new models”.
It also warns that after a catastrophic AI incident, “no single insurer, and potentially the insurance industry in the aggregate,” may be able to cover the damage.
The giveaway in the small print
The filing confirms the Public Benefit Fund: 846,840,960 non-voting shares, 5% of the company, with up to 2% more each time the share price rises 50% above the last milestone, starting from the IPO price. Each co-founder has also pledged to give 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to philanthropic causes.
Why it matters
Public investors will be able to buy into Anthropic, but not to steer it: between the founders’ single share and the trust’s board seats, ordinary shareholders get a minority of the say. The filing’s missing price range is the next thing to watch, and it will show whether Wall Street buys the $2 trillion ambitions on those terms.
Sources: Anthropic, PBC Form S-1 (SEC); SEC filing index.
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