Anthropic Files S-1 Prospectus with Ticker ANT, First-Half Revenue of $16.286 Billion

Anthropic has publicly filed its S-1 registration statement with the SEC under the ticker symbol "ANT," with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as underwriters—this will be the largest IPO in human history. Many fascinating details have been disclosed in the document, and one thing worth celebrating is that—we did not see an AI bubble 👀

Entering 2026, Anthropic's revenue growth accelerated further, reaching $16.286 billion in the first half, up about 1,300% from $1.163 billion in the same period last year—half a year's revenue alone was about 3.6 times its full-year 2025 revenue.

However, net loss also widened to $80.748 billion in the same period, compared with $12.969 billion a year earlier. Of that, about $72.388 billion came from fair value changes in convertible debt, derivative liabilities and Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFE), mainly related to Anthropic's rising valuation; these are non-cash accounting losses, not actual cash paid out at a comparable scale.

From an operating perspective, Anthropic's operating loss in the first half narrowed from $2.135 billion a year earlier to $693 million, a decline of about 68%. In the second quarter it achieved about $974 million in GAAP operating profit.

Claude has expanded from "an engineer's coding tool" to "a work agent for everyone," and has begun to be embedded in the products customers sell to end users themselves. Agents that can truly do work have entered enterprises' real production environments; they operate like the bearings of the business, and all of this is just beginning!

In addition, Anthropic is putting more compute into self-improvement of its models to ensure its leading position. But the two most noteworthy risks in the S-1 are:

First, customers and cloud providers are too concentrated. A considerable portion of Anthropic's revenue comes from a handful of large customers and sales channels; if just one or two of them reduce their spending, performance would be noticeably affected. At the same time, the compute it needs to train and run models relies mainly on a few cloud providers. These cloud providers have complex identities—they are suppliers, investors and customers at the same time, and their interests are not fully aligned. Once relations change, compute supply and revenue could be hit simultaneously.

Second, shareholders have almost no control. The company's voting power is concentrated in a long-term benefit trust and the founders, and far exceeds their actual economic interests. Ordinary Class A shareholders are mainly buying economic returns and have basically no say over the board, major decisions, or even the company being acquired. On top of that, Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, and the board must balance shareholder returns against the company's mission—shareholder interests may not come first.

Personally, I feel that after this Anthropic IPO, it will mark a short-term peak for US stocks, and various unexpected news will soon trigger a sharp market correction. For example, customers using various API calls more economically, customer churn and slowing growth will all be factors causing market volatility.

But in the medium to long term, enterprise AI adoption has only just begun; we still have ample room to see AI's true penetration and the revenue and valuation growth of leading companies. The real AI bubble is all in the early-stage companies that are hot right now 🤔