Introduction: Anthropic warns AI may pose 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO filing
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Anthropic’s plan to float on the stock market has provided a sobering insight into the risks that AI poses, even as it attempts to pull off a massive share sale to the public.
Reuters has taken a look at Anthropic’s IPO prospectus – the legal document that outlines a company’s financial details before it floats on the stock market – and found that it includes a warning that advanced AI could be a “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”
The filing explains:
“Our development of highly advanced models, platforms, and applications and expansion of use cases could further increase the risk that our models cause harm.”
And following a flurry of stories about AI models going rogue, Anthropic flags that its models could conceal information and exhibit behavior resembling blackmail, and resist efforts to shut them down.
It cautions:
“Potential model awareness of our evaluation efforts creates a significant limitation on our ability to assess model safety.”
Such warnings appear across 80 pages (!) devoted to risk factors in the prospectus, almost a third of the document.
Despite these warnings, Anthropic – which created the Claude chatbot – is aiming for one of the largest stock market flotations ever, which could value it at more than $2tn.
The IPO prospectus shows that Anthropic’s revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6bn – with nearly a quarter coming from just two customers.
But… its operating loss swelled to over $8bn last year, from nearly $3bn in 2024.
The IPO is expected to take place after the US midterm elections in November, and will be a serious test of investor interest, and concern, around AI.
Yesterday, a group of senior AI executives – and two of the “godfathers” of the technology – warned governments to prepare for an AI “intelligence explosion”.
The agenda
9.30am BST: Bank of England mortgage approvals data
10am BST: UK to auction a 2036 government bond
1.30pm BST: Canadian GDP report for July
2pm BST: US house price data
3pm BST: US JOLTS survey of job vacancies
4.30pm: Bank of England policymaker Alan Taylor gives a speech