A dim room. A slide that reads $16.8 billion (€15.5 billion) in revenue. The applause never came — only a slow, sinking quiet.
I’ve followed company roadshows long enough to know when numbers are cheered and when they’re being measured. You can feel the difference in the room: optimism versus recalculation. That split is the story of Anthropic’s IPO whisper campaign this week.
In a closed-door presentation, investors saw profitable-but-mixed results.
People who attended the meeting told the Financial Times the company touted being profitable on an adjusted basis last quarter and reported revenue growth of about $5 billion (€4.6 billion), bringing total revenue to $16.8 billion (€15.5 billion).
But numbers that would be cause for celebration at many companies landed differently here: revenue momentum slowed. Attendees left focused less on profit and more on the pacing — revenue more than doubled between Q1 and Q2, then rose roughly 45% from Q2 to Q3. That deceleration has some investors talking about slashing Anthropic’s IPO valuation by roughly $500 billion (€460 billion), according to Reuters.
Is Anthropic profitable?
Short answer: yes, on an adjusted basis last quarter. The longer answer is where the controversy lives — adjusted profit can mask heavy reinvestment and one-time items, and investors are asking whether current margins can survive the scale Anthropic plans.
In the streets and pensions office, public officials are asking for a pause.
New York City comptroller Mark Levine sent a direct letter to CEO Dario Amodei urging that the IPO be delayed while safety work continues.
Levine’s argument is simple: New York City pension funds already have exposure to Anthropic, and a public listing could change incentives overnight. “Once they are public, they will have new pressures on growth and profits that push against the safety work,” Levine told CNBC. He warned that a major safety failure would “tank their stock and reverberate through the market.”
Dario Amodei himself has framed the company’s mission in stark terms, saying unchecked AI development could lead to catastrophic outcomes. That admission makes the comptroller’s ask harder to dismiss; you can see why city officials feel like spectators with money on the table.
Why are politicians asking for a delay?
Because the risk is financial and reputational: public markets shift priorities. Regulators, elected officials, and fiduciaries fear an IPO could shorten the runway for safety research at exactly the moment that work needs attention.
In boardrooms and cloud contracts, the dominoes are already laid out.
Anthropic has plans to spend more than $500 billion (€460 billion) over the next decade on AI infrastructure, supported by multibillion-dollar deals with Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
That scale is why investors expected relentless growth. If Anthropic can’t keep pace, you don’t just dent one company — you test a network of interlocking bets across tech partners, customers, and lenders. Michael Burry, who called the 2008 housing crash, has publicly warned of an AI bubble that could burst within a year, citing leverage in the market among other risks. If the market’s faith falters, the deals might cascade like a line of dominoes.
Will Anthropic’s IPO affect the AI market?
Yes. This is more than a valuation exercise. A public Anthropic would be a signal about how frontier labs are priced, governed, and regulated. It would also reframe vendor deals and partnership dynamics with the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
I want you to hold two things at once: the allure of a headline-grabbing IPO and the practical pressure of quarterly reporting. For investors chasing growth, the slides were underwhelming. For civic stewards and pension managers, the timing feels premature. For retail buyers, hype will still be a magnet.
Anthropic sits under a pressure cooker lid — the heat is mutual: market demands on one side, existential-safety warnings on the other. If the company rushes forward, will it compromise the guardrails it says it needs; if it waits, will competitors and investors grow impatient?
Who gets to decide whether profit timelines or public safety get priority when both are on the line?