Anthropic Is Going Public. Here's What Its Filing Reveals | Fortune Daily

0:00Bum bum bum bum bum bum. Breaking news from the tech world today. Anthropic just opened its books. Inside, one of the biggest half-year losses any company has ever posted. And yet, we're still looking at one of the biggest IPOs in history. Senior AI reporter Beatrice Nolan joins me now with her reporting on today's Anthropic S1 filing. I'm Ellie Austin and this is Fortune Daily. Bea, thank you so much for joining us today. I can't imagine how much of a frantic few hours you have had because Anthropic has just dropped its S1, which we spoke to you about the prospect of a few weeks ago, and now it's happened.

0:47What are your initial takeaways from reading their financial disclosures? Yeah, so Anthropic has obviously filed its S1 with the SEC today. It's the first time we've had a really in-depth look at the company's finances. But as you say, a lot of this stuff leaked out already. So a lot of this still matches up to what we already knew. But it announced it planned to list on the NASDAQ under the ticker AND. That's new. The price range here is still blank. But earlier reports put the target valuation at 1.5 to 2 trillion. This is kind of like our first official look at how much the company is spending, how much it's making, who is benefiting, and what the risks are.

1:27And what are the risks? Tell us what we found out that's new about risks at the company. Well, I guess it's our first in-depth look at this, right? The risk factors run about 94 pages, which is long even by IPO standards. It openly acknowledges concerns, including those within its own organization that advanced AI may pose this catastrophic or existential risk to humanity. It also disclosed that four of its models gained unauthorized access to the internet and attacked real world systems. Those are some of the rogue AI agent hacks we've been hearing a lot about. It also warns that its models are getting better at evading oversight.

2:06There are a couple of things here with Washington and the US government at the moment. It touched on the active legal fight it's in with the Pentagon over supply chain risk designation that came about earlier this year after a public fight with the Department of War over using their models for defense deals. On Washington, it notes that also there might be a risk to business from potential US legislation, including potential nationalization of frontier AI, which was interesting. It also warned that its safety decisions may not always maximize shareholder value. So a few things here. And that nationalization point that you just mentioned, Bea, where does that come from?

2:44You know, you said surprising. It's something, it's a conversation that's in the ether, but not anything that I don't believe we've heard specific details about. So why the inclusion of that? Yeah, I think it's just acknowledging that that could be a further threat to business. I think that the talk over nationalization has actually calmed in the last few months. It sort of reached its peak a few months ago when OpenAI was allegedly in discussions for the US government to take a stake of the company. But yeah, I think it's just, it shows how much this technology and the companies that build them business can be affected by changes in the administration's policy towards AI.

3:20What did we learn from the filings about the company's founders, so the Amodi siblings, and how they control Anthropic at this point? Yeah, so Anthropic has seven co-founders, all of which are still there, including, as you mentioned, Dario and Daniela Amodi. They're going to collectively hold a single special share, carrying about 50.1 % of shareholder voting power. So that means that public shareholders, although they get a vote, the filing actually says that the structure may effectively eliminate their ability to influence major decisions, which is interesting. Anthropic is also a public benefit corporation.

3:56So directors are sort of instructed to balance profits against developing AI for this broader good of humanity. Each co-founder has also pledged to donate 80 % of their equity to philanthropy. And the company's put about 5 % of shares into its public benefit fund as well. And you said that right now, Bea, the price range on the valuation of the company is blank. When can we expect to get a sense of that? I think obviously before the listing itself, but we're expecting that before Thanksgiving. So hopefully shouldn't have to wait for too long. But there has been a bit of speculation recently. Originally, Anthropic was reported to be targeting this$2 trillion valuation.

4:35But there have been some reports recently they might be scaling this back to$1.5 trillion. Still a lot of money, but a significant markdown. How has this S1 filing been received so far? It dropped a few hours ago. What are you hearing? What are you seeing other outlets reporting? What are the main takeaways here? I mean, it's still early days in terms of going through this whole thing. But I think there's a little bit of speculation. Obviously, there are some things we've expected. The cost of compute and just how expensive it is to keep building and developing these models is really coming out of this S1.

5:09But also the fact that Anthropic actually made a profit in its last quarter in the Q1 quarter, and its growth has really accelerated. So it's up 14 times year over year in 2026 from the year before. So there's sort of pluses and negatives here. And I'm interested in your process this morning as our senior AI reporter. Did you know the S1 was going to appear today? And then how long did it take you to read through it? How many stories have you got to write? Take us inside what your day looks like today when there's a big story like this breaking. Well, we weren't sure if this was going to drop actually on Friday or today.

5:47Those were our two options. So obviously when we didn't get this on Friday, we knew it was coming at some point. Today, there was some early reporting it might drop at 9am, which it did. So yeah, we were pretty ready. Our amazing tech editor had a whole game plan for us. And luckily my New York colleagues were already awake. So between a lot of us, I'm sure you'll see a lot of stories coming out today. So Bea, if you're someone who's hypothetically looking to invest in Anthropic when it does eventually go public, what should you be looking out for over the coming weeks and months other than, of course, that price range?

6:20So keep an eye out for analysts' full review of this. Keep an eye on what it does to the broader market as well. But one thing I would say to keep an eye on is how Anthropic employees react to this as well. Anthropic employees have shown themselves to be quite outspoken, as we saw during the existential risk conversation. and all of them posted publicly. Anthropic actually notes in that S1, which I found very interesting, employee disruption as a potential risk. So they say employees who joined our company based on safety commitments may experience decline in morale, disillusionment, and a loss of trust in leadership, or even reduce productivity if they perceive that we're not living up to our stated values.

6:58And not to say that Anthropic is not already doing that, you know, they've been very honest about the risks, and that's something they committed to doing. But I'd be interested to see if there's any more outcry from employees. This is fascinating. I'm sure we will be coming back to you again and again on this topic as the IPO approaches. Thank you so much for fitting us in today. Thanks for having me. So one of the big factors in the success of Anthropics IPO is going to be its ability to convince investors of its ability to generate revenue. Companies are using more AI than ever, but they're not spending more on it.

7:32And that's because the price keeps dropping. Ramp's lead economist Ara Karazian joins us now to explain more in the big number. Now it's time to dive into the data with today's big number. An analysis of this data is done in collaboration with the Ramp Economics Lab. The number is 1224.6, and that refers to token volume. What are tokens? Well, tokens are basically how AI companies meet a usage. and Ramp's index of token volume has climbed from 100 in January of this year to 1 ,224.6 about a week ago. That's about 12 times as much AI use, so you'd expect the bill to be 12 times bigger too. However, it's not.

8:23Ramp's lead economist Ara Karazian is here to help us understand why. The big number is powered by Ramp, a finance platform built to get other companies to spend less. The median company on Ramp cuts expenses 5 % and grows revenue 16 % in its first year. Learn more at ramp.com. All right, I think we need to set the scene, which is briefly explaining what a token is and why it's how AI gets billed.

8:51Beatrice Nolan: So tokens are actually kind of an arbitrary definition. Every model company comes up with its own definition of what a token basically is. But it's really our best way of measuring AI usage as well. All of this is downstream of the fact that it's really hard to measure the ROI of AI. It's also really hard to measure whether and how firms are using it. And so kind of the best way we've come up with is what shows up on the bill, which is a combination of tokens, which is just how the AI model companies have come up with how to charge you and dollars spent. which is ultimately what you end up paying for.

9:27So your index at RAM went from 100 in January to more than 1 ,200 now, about 10 months later. Explain that very steep incline to me. What does it mean?

9:38Beatrice Nolan: For the last two years that we've been tracking AI's proliferation through the economy, it has been the fastest growing spend category we've ever tracked. In large part, that's because AI is this technology that has been transformational in certain sectors. Its adoption has proliferated across the economy. and it's also extremely expensive, so its spend has kind of spiraled out of control. What's happened uniquely over the last couple months is that volumes of AI token usage have continued to rise, but AI spend itself is starting to slow. So there's a couple things going on that might drive that kind of dynamic.

10:11Beatrice Nolan: One, AI is becoming much more common in the workplace. It's being deployed by organizations across the Fortune 500 and very high intensity tech companies. At the same time, it's getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And that ultimately poses a threat to the model companies that need to profit off this technology so they can reinvest in data centers and continue to grow their market share. That ends up being one of the causes of hysteria in the markets lately is who's going to win from the AI trade. We'd previously been projecting that this is a market that will benefit all levels of the tech stack from the AI model companies to the hardware manufacturers.

10:50Beatrice Nolan: And that assumption is increasingly coming under pressure. And you talked about AI getting cheaper in a way. And is it like what happened with phone minutes and internet data? Is there a way that you can kind of draw a comparison that helps people really picture what's going on here? It's really hard to know where this is all going to land because that's one of the main historical analogies people will draw from. At the same time, it's not yet clear how the technology is going to develop in ways that are productivity-enhancing for other industries. Let's remember, today the most commercially advanced form of AI is coding agents.

11:31Beatrice Nolan: Coding agents were not really a thing until only about a year and a half ago. And simultaneously, the AI companies are developing and introducing new products and new revenue models. They're now increasingly getting into consumer AI and starting to offer products that will drive revenues at the consumer level. And so it remains to be seen whether or not they will be able to capitalize on that and turn it into something that drives their actual top line growth. So you talked about companies increasing the volume of tokens that they're buying. What does that actually look like on a concrete level within a business?

12:04How does it change the way it operates?

12:06Beatrice Nolan: Well, today, most firms in the US are using AI in some way. What's unique about AI versus other technological facets of our society is that AI spend and adoption itself is also highly concentrated and highly correlated within that concentration. 1 % of businesses drive 80 % of spend on AI models. And within that top 1%, 80 % of them, again, are VC-backed tech companies. So at those VC-backed tech companies, AI is just a facet of how normal work happens. Much of the work is happening in coding agents. much of the work is already happening in some kind of automated software infrastructure. It still remains to be seen whether or not that kind of adoption will be able to proliferate or even make sense to proliferate outside the tech sector.

12:53Beatrice Nolan: Can you really imagine a doctor's office or a restaurant using AI in a sort of software factory? Probably not, right? Because that's not really what they do day to day. And at the same time, it's very possible that the AI companies will be able to develop something that does drive productivity for those firms. It's just that we haven't necessarily seen that from them. Who's winning right now? Is it the companies buying the AI or the companies selling the AI? Or both, I guess. I think the users are winning. The businesses that use AI are getting a better and better product every month at a lower and lower cost.

13:26Beatrice Nolan: So right now, they seem to be the winners. All right. Thank you so much. See you soon. Thank you. Are you counting on receiving an inheritance? Well, bad news because your parents may already be spending it. And that's because some retired boomers are embracing skiing, which is short for spending the kid's inheritance. And it's usually on vacations and experiences. Fortune success editor Oriana Rosaroy joins us now to explore this generational clash over that simple but very important question. Is that money a family legacy to be passed down? or is it a retirement reward that your parents have worked really hard for?

14:05Arianna, it's great that you've dropped in to see us while you're in New York for a week from London because normally I only ever see you on the other side of the screen. You've written this piece about skiing. It's not going up and down a mountain. Tell us what it is. It's shorthand for spending the kids' inheritance. It basically, in principle, is retirees, instead of saving all their money to pass it down to the next generation, they're enjoying it. So the UK's largest travel association, Averter, found that 85 % of retirees are going on holiday. And the CEO specifically attributed the rise in pensioners going on vacation with them spending money that they would have otherwise passed down to their children.

14:47And how does this fit in with everything we're hearing about the great wealth transfer? We talk about that monumental moment in intergenerational finances a lot on this show and what it means for the likes of us, the millennials, who are due to inherit money. But it sounds like, hey, maybe that's not going to be the case after all. Maybe our parents will have spent it. So give me some context. Yeah. So separate data shows more than half of millennials and Gen Z expect to receive some sort of inheritance. And they're banking on that in order to retire comfortably when they're older. but only 22 % of boomers actually plan to leave an inheritance at all and 11 % plan on leaving it to their children so they're in for a big surprise if they're not leaving it to their children what's the data showing about where they're going to be who they're going to be leaving it to so there's not that much data on exactly who they're going to leave it to but you know there's this big trend on die with zero this ethos that they want to spend it the author yeah and enjoy it while they're still living you know it's clear that boomers are living longer than any generation before them.

15:46They've got more wealth than any generation before them. And a lot of them worked for a long time. And now they just want to enjoy the wealth that they earned in their lives. And it's very clear that they're perhaps not having a conversation with their children because so many children, I guess, with the cost of living, you know, they're banking on this inheritance for security. You know, the cost of living is high. Being able to afford a property isn't like what it used to be. So there's clearly a lack of conversation happening between parents and children, hey, actually, you guys need to buy your own property.

16:17You can't necessarily bank on me footing the bill when I pass away. I spent the weekend talking to my parents and giving them advice on the three-week trip to the West Coast that they want to take in February of next year. And I really understand why they want to do it. And I support it, even if it means that my sister and I end up with less money as a result of it. They're in their 60s and 70s. I feel like that's what they should be doing. In your reporting, Abta's CEO says that part of this trend is because boomer parents don't want to leave assets that will be eaten away by taxes. Is that a factor?

16:53I mean, I think that's a little bit of a factor, but I think it's much easier to say, I don't want to leave my money to taxes than to say, I just want to enjoy my money. And I don't want to pass it on. I don't want to live frugally. I've worked all my life. like I want to enjoy it. More broadly is this happening in the US or is it just UK specific? No it's definitely global. The study that showed that you know Gen Z and millennials most of them expect some kind of inheritance but only 22 % of boomers plan on giving it that is in the US so it's clearly a global trend that people are living longer they're wealthier than ever and their retirement's much longer than it would have been and they're actually healthy enough to enjoy it they're not housebound they're not just planning on pottering around they can travel the world so why wouldn't they and so the upshot of all this if we're thinking about takeaways for anyone who's listening or watching is have the difficult conversation whether your parents or children have the conversation about who's intending to do what with their money and what it means for the rest of the family exactly i don't think it's nice for anyone if you know they open the wheel and they realize that there are you know mum died with zero i think it should be an ongoing conversation i don't think anyone should be entitled and think like oh you know i'm going to wait until my parents pass away for me to afford living.

18:04Just start living your life, even if you're a Gen Z. And I know it costs a living's high, but instead of wasting until you're in your 40s or 50s or 60s when your parents' products pass away, start living now instead of holding your breath and waiting for that retirement. And start having those conversations with your parents on what can I expect. Ariana, thank you. You write about success a lot. Where can people find more of your reporting? You can find anything success under the leadership tab on fortune.com. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin.

18:35Let us know your thoughts on Amthropic and its IPO in the comments. We'll see you tomorrow.