Anthropic's IPO paperwork, explained

Transcript

Anthropic, the company behind Claude, just filed paperwork to go public on the stock market. And the documents reveal some pretty crazy numbers about the AI business. Let's start with revenue. In just the first six months of 2026, Anthropic made over $16 billion. That's 14 times more than it made during the same period last year. But here's the surprising part. It also reported a loss of more than $80 billion. Now that doesn't mean Anthropic actually spent $80 billion more than it earned. Most of that loss comes from accounting rules that increase the reported value of some of its financial obligations as the company became more valuable. If we look at its everyday business operations instead, the loss was closer to $700 million. Now here's where things get interesting. How expensive is it to actually run an AI company like this? During those same six months, Anthropic spent almost $9 billion on computing power. That's the massive data centers and specialized chips needed to train AI models and answer your questions. That's equivalent to about $0.55 spent on computing for every dollar of revenue. And believe it or not, that's a huge improvement. Last year, its computing expenses were actually greater than its entire revenue. Now let's talk about its CEO, Dario Amade. He received nearly $18 million in total compensation last year. But that wasn't all cash salary. Most came from stock related compensation. The company also reportedly spent millions of dollars on his personal security. And here's another interesting detail. Even after Anthropic goes public, its seven co-founders are expected to retain just over 50% of the voting power on general shareholder decisions. Basically outside investors can buy shares, but the founders will still have the deciding vote on those matters. And finally, how much could Anthropic be worth? Reports suggest the company could go public at a valuation approaching $2 trillion. To put that into perspective, that's $2,000 billion for a company that was founded in 2021. Of course, that valuation hasn't been confirmed yet. But these numbers showed just how quickly the AI industry is growing, how expensive it is to compete, and how much investors are betting on its future.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.