Anthropic's draft IPO filing leaks: sales soar, so do paper losses

What happened: The Wall Street Journal saw Anthropic's draft IPO filing. Revenue hit $16.3 billion in the first half of the year, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier. Losses were about $80 billion, mostly paper accounting charges. Compute spending nearly quadrupled to almost $9 billion in six months, and the filing says Anthropic could spend up to $750 billion on computing in coming years. An IPO is projected for next month.
The claim: Anthropic told investors it made an adjusted profit last quarter. CEO Dario Amodei posted a long thread on X about the safety measures the company is taking.
Austin's take: Austin calls the growth staggering and says it is speeding up, not slowing. He doesn't buy conspiracy theories about Anthropic, but flags a real concern about a small group controlling powerful intelligence and influencing how it's regulated. His fix: real competition, open source alongside closed source, and ongoing third-party safety checks. He noted the top replies to Amodei's post pushed back on his claims.
Why it matters: This is the first real look inside a frontier AI lab that regular investors may soon be able to buy, and it shows both explosive demand and enormous compute bills.
What to do: If you're thinking about buying in at IPO, wait for the official filing and look past the headline revenue to compute commitments and how the losses break down.
Not confirmed yet: Austin stresses these are leaked, reported figures from a draft filing. Official numbers aren't out yet and the IPO timing isn't confirmed. Some of his on-air growth multiples were rough.

The Loop