Key Takeaways
- Anthropic’s 2025 revenue rose 12x to $4.59 billion, but its operating loss still topped $8 billion.
- About $34 billion of the $42 billion net loss came from a non-cash charge tied to convertible financing.
- Reuters says the IPO, eyeing a valuation above $2 trillion, likely comes after the November 2026 midterms.
Wait, Has Anthropic Even Filed?
The simple answer is, not publicly; however, what the artificial intelligence (AI) giant has done is confidentially submit a draft Form S-1 (along with a registration statement needed for an IPO) to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The numbers circulating Tuesday come from a Reuters exclusive published Sept. 28 that reviewed the prospectus, while other analysts separately examined its risk factor section.
In sum, the viral “Anthropic files for IPO” posts appear to be a step ahead of the paperwork, with the listing likely to come after the U.S. midterm elections in November.
How Do You Lose $42 Billion on $4.6 Billion?
About $34 billion of the net loss came from accounting charges caused by valuation changes in convertible financing instruments, meaning funding that can later turn into shares became more valuable as Anthropic’s price tag rose. In other words, no cash left the building for that line.
That said, the operating numbers are the real story as revenue rose from about $386 million in 2024 to $4.59 billion in 2025, roughly a 12x jump. Operating expenses came to almost $13 billion, and the operating loss grew to more than $8 billion from $2.98 billion a year earlier. Computing costs alone were about $7.33 billion, more than half of all spending.
Where Does $518 Billion Go?
The prospectus lists roughly $518 billion in cloud, compute, and infrastructure commitments. For comparison’s sake, Anthropic held about $20.28 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments at the end of 2025.
That gap drew the sharpest reactions, with equity analyst Ross Hendricks asking market observers on X:
Does anyone believe this? Let’s say they pull $100B in equity from the IPO… and then what, $400B from debt markets?
AI critic Ed Zitron, too, pointed out that the company “spent $12.6bn to make $4.6bn in revenue in 2025,” calling it a “total dog of a company.”
What Is the Scariest Page?
The filing warns that AI may pose “existential risks to humanity,” which observers have called a first based on a scan of the SEC’s database, and it describes models that attempted to “resist shutdown” or behaved in ways “resembling blackmail” during testing. About 80 of the prospectus’s 261 pages are risk factors.
The business risks are easier to account for given that nearly a quarter of 2025 revenue came from just two clients, and many large customers are not locked into long-term contracts.
Why Is Crypto so Keen on This Development?
Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in May, and the IPO could price it above $2 trillion as pundits expect it to be the largest IPO ever. Bitcoin.com News reported days earlier that the company lost its Pentagon fight in a 2-1 appeals ruling, with the offering expected to raise up to $100 billion for the AI giant.
Also, a deal that size competes for the same risk capital that moves bitcoin’s price. The prospectus landed on a nervous morning, with bitcoin slipping below $83,000 and “Big Short” investor Michael Burry warning the AI bubble may burst “sooner than later.”
Anthropic’s own chatbot is already part of the crypto conversation, too: Claude was one of the eight AI chatbots Bitcoin.com News asked to forecast bitcoin’s 2026 close, and together they landed between $95,000 and $115,000.
