Anthropic Files for IPO After Revenue Jumps 1,368% in a Year

Anthropic's revenue grew 1,368% year-over-year in the three months ended June 30, 2026, the company disclosed in a filing for what could become one of the largest IPOs on record. Compute and infrastructure expenses grew 300% over the same period.

The Claude maker filed to go public after a year spent fighting publishers in court, clashing with the Pentagon and signing contracts for hundreds of billions of dollars in computing power. Second-quarter revenue reached $11.56 billion, up from $787 million a year earlier. Compute and infrastructure costs fell to 48% of revenue from 251% in the first quarter of 2025. The gap produced $974 million in operating income — the only profitable quarter in the disclosed results.

Anthropic plans to list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the offering. The filing does not yet include a price range or share count. The Wall Street Journal reported the offering could raise $100 billion or more and value the company between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion, with a listing targeted for the week of Nov. 16.

Who controls the company after the listing?

Anthropic's seven co-founders will retain control through a single Class F share, held by an LLC they own, carrying 50.1% of total voting power on most shareholder votes. The share carries no economic rights.

If the offering completes, Anthropic will become the first standalone American frontier AI lab to trade publicly, ahead of rival OpenAI, which is not expected to list until 2027.

How concentrated is the revenue?

The filing spells out what the growth depends on: a small group of large customers and a steady stream of new models.

• The top five customers accounted for about 25% of revenue in the nine months ended Sept. 30; no single customer exceeded 10%.
• Customers spending at least $100,000 a year grew "from more than 950 to more than 11,900" over the 12 months ended Sept. 30.
• About 250 customers spend at least $10 million each.
• The rest comes from "approximately 40 million customers, each with less than $100,000 of revenue on a TTM basis."

Many of the largest clients lack long-term contracts, meaning future revenue could dry up or disappear, the company noted. Anthropic also estimated about 7% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026 came from customers it later found were violating its usage policy or commercial terms. Enforcement stepped up in August and September "may reduce our overall revenue and growth rates in future periods," the filing said.

What are the risks?

Risk factors take up 94 pages — nearly a quarter of the document. Anthropic wrote that models, "including our own, have exhibited, and may in the future exhibit, unexpected strategic or self-preserving behaviors, including attempts to resist shutdown." It also cited outputs showing "behavior resembling blackmails or efforts to influence human decision-makers to preserve the model's continued operation or access."

Insurance may not cover the fallout. "With the scale of harm that could result from a catastrophic AI-related incident, no single insurer, and potentially the insurance industry in the aggregate, may have sufficient capacity or expertise to underwrite insurance commensurate with such exposure," the company wrote.

Why do Google and Amazon benefit?

Google and Amazon will collect the largest share of Anthropic's compute spending. Anthropic owes Google at least $114.5 billion through 2033 and Amazon at least $110 billion through 2036, payable "regardless of actual usage." Anthropic expects to spend another $125 billion to $150 billion on Google's TPU capacity between 2028 and 2031. The Journal puts total compute obligations above $475 billion.

Both companies are also investors. Google put $10 billion and Amazon $5 billion into the Series H round, and Anthropic can raise up to another $20 billion from Google and $15 billion from Amazon via convertible notes or non-voting stock.

What about Washington?

In February, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology — a response, per the filing, to the company's "publicly stated position that our technology should not be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons." The Secretary of War moved to designate Anthropic a "supply-chain risk to national security." Anthropic sued and won most of its case in federal district court in August; an appeals court ruled 2-1 against it in September, and Anthropic has asked the full court to reconsider.

Government contracts make up roughly 1% of revenue. The bigger exposure sits with companies that serve the government. Anthropic said it "cannot be certain that the resolution of these lawsuits will not adversely affect our ability to sell to government agencies," and those customers.

ADWEEK has reached out to Anthropic for comment. For marketers and enterprise buyers, the filing signals that frontier AI capacity is now priced in the hundreds of billions — and that Anthropic's public investors will bear those obligations alongside it.