# Anthropic Files for it's IPO: Founders Keep 50.1% Voting Rights

An episode of [AI Chat: AI News on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1669990482), 26 Oct 2026, 12 min.

Audio: https://content.rss.com/episodes/365073/3267708/ai-chat-podcast/2026_10_26_22_16_22_f2d904d9-2943-40f4-bb6b-d712f21e01e6.mp3

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! In this episode, we break down Anthropic's recent S1 filing for their NASDAQ IPO, revealing shocking figures such as $16.29 billion in first-half revenue alongside an $80.7 billion net loss. We also explore how Anthropic's unique class F shares enable co-founders to maintain significant control over the company, positioning them for a potentially monumental IPO. Chapters 00:00 IPO Overview 01:58 Financial Details 04:00 Revenue Projections 05:59 Voting Power Explained 08:00 Customer Base Insights 10:01 Closing Thoughts Show Links • Get the top 80+ AI Models for $8.99 at AI Box: https://aibox.ai • How I Grow and Scale My Business with AI: https://www.skool.com/aihustle • Get the AI Chat Daily Newsletter: https://www.aichatdaily.com/newsletter

## Transcript

[0:00] Anthropic has officially filed their S1 for their
[0:03] Nasdaq IPO. The stock ticker is going to be Ant,
[0:07] A -N -T. In this filing, a lot of really wild
[0:11] things appear. One is that they made $16 .29
[0:14] billion. in first half revenue. They have an
[0:18] $80 .7 billion net loss and a single founder
[0:22] share has 50 .1 % of the vote. There's a lot
[0:26] going on. We're going to break down the entire
[0:28] Anthropic S1. This could be one of the biggest
[0:31] IPOs of all time in all history. So we're going
[0:33] to break that down today on the show. Before
[0:35] we do, I wanted to mention, if you want to try
[0:37] all the latest models from Anthropic or from
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[1:39] AI. All right, let's talk about what's going
[1:40] on with Anthropic here. So they just filed their
[1:44] Form S -1 registration statement with the SEC.
[1:46] This is going to be their big IPO. The number
[1:49] of shares and the price range haven't actually
[1:52] been set yet. And I think this registration statement
[1:55] is also not yet effective. So no shares can be
[1:58] sold until the SEC basically approves it and
[2:02] allows them to. Anthropic submitted a confidential
[2:04] draft on the 1st of June. So we're now all the
[2:07] way in October, almost in November, apparently.
[2:11] Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading
[2:13] a syndicate of more than 20 underwriters on this
[2:16] deal. So there is a lot of people that are working
[2:18] on this. A lot of people won the IPO. They're
[2:19] going to just pick Goldman Sachs. They're just
[2:21] going to pick Morgan Stanley. They're putting
[2:22] them both. It feels like they're pitting them
[2:24] against each other. But there's a lot of other
[2:25] people in this syndicate of underwriters. The
[2:27] revenue ramp in this filing was really shocking
[2:30] to me. It feels very steep. $41 million in 2023.
[2:35] And then. $386 million in 2024, and then $4 .59
[2:40] billion in 2025, and then $16 .29 billion in
[2:44] the first half of 2026 alone. So you could say,
[2:47] well, if they never grew at all, then that would
[2:49] be over $30 billion. But we know their growth
[2:52] rate has been really incredible. So just in the
[2:54] first six months, if it was 16, billion, I think
[2:57] we're going to see a really massive uptick. Anthropic
[3:01] is describing their business uptake of basically
[3:03] everyone using Claude as, quote, the fastest
[3:05] enterprise adoption of any technology in history,
[3:08] which I guess enterprise is the key word in there
[3:11] because the fastest adoption, I think ChatGPT
[3:13] is going to be winning this or OpenAI is going
[3:15] to be winning this with ChatGPT if it's just
[3:17] general purpose. But enterprise adoption, I mean,
[3:19] Anthropic really might have that cornered. And
[3:21] to be fair, that's where the money is, right?
[3:22] The enterprise is obviously going to spend way
[3:24] more money than OpenAI is. So this is a very
[3:26] valuable company to have. With all of this, the
[3:29] net loss, like I mentioned, was... $80 .7 billion,
[3:33] and that includes about $72 .4 billion in non
[3:38] -cash fair value charges. The operating loss
[3:41] was $693 million. Anthropic has committed to
[3:46] spend over $450 billion on cloud computing. with
[3:50] Amazon and Google, and there's a bunch of other
[3:52] suppliers and investors that they're going to
[3:54] be spending this on. So they had massive commitments
[3:57] of $450 billion plus. They already lost $80 billion
[4:01] as their net loss. And the revenue was $16 billion.
[4:05] I mean, we don't know exactly. I think I've seen
[4:07] some estimates that their revenue run rate is
[4:10] like, you know, what's it going to make in the
[4:11] next 12 months is like $80 billion. That's impressive,
[4:15] but they still have $450 billion in commitments
[4:18] for cloud compute. So they have a lot of money
[4:20] that's going to need to be spent to build up
[4:22] infrastructure. Now, what I will say is there's
[4:24] a couple different parts of that. Part of that
[4:26] is literally just paying Amazon or Google or,
[4:28] you know, they pay SpaceX a billion dollars a
[4:30] month for their Colossus data center compute.
[4:33] So they have to pay a lot of those type of deals.
[4:35] But I think that they're probably going to be
[4:37] spending money as well, like OpenAI and like
[4:39] SpaceX and others on, you know, meta on building
[4:41] out their own data centers and their own infrastructure.
[4:44] A single class F share held by seven co -founders
[4:48] is the thing that a lot of people were kind of
[4:49] shocked by. So a single class F share that was
[4:52] held by seven of the co -founder carries 50 .1
[4:55] % of the voting power, which basically makes
[4:58] Anthropic a controlled company under NASDAQ rules.
[5:01] We've seen similar things, right? When Zuckerberg
[5:04] went public with Meta, he had super voting. abilities
[5:08] where basically he can make the final say on
[5:10] all of the company's decisions and in fact there
[5:12] is they needed to raise a bunch of money so the
[5:15] reason why this is important because this is
[5:16] what is happening with meta today is going to
[5:18] happen with anthropic in the future based off
[5:20] of how they've set that up so i'll just explain
[5:21] what's happening with meta today they just launched
[5:23] a 35 billion dollar stock offering and the reason
[5:26] is because they need to fund their ai infrastructure
[5:28] push so Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, all of them are
[5:31] apparently interested up to about $5 billion
[5:33] of that. And there's going to be a separate $60
[5:36] billion class C share sale that's planned for
[5:39] next year. So they're going to sell $35 billion
[5:41] now and they have Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom that
[5:43] are going to buy $5 billion. You can imagine
[5:45] all of those companies are going to be suppliers
[5:46] to Meta. So Nvidia is like, look, we'll throw
[5:49] a couple billion dollars in. But they're going
[5:51] to do a stock offering. So they're putting this
[5:54] out on the market. 35 billion is what they're
[5:56] trying to raise now the problem was zuckerberg
[5:58] up until this point always had super voting rights
[6:01] and the amount of stocks when they ipo'd uh that
[6:04] went out they you know zuckerberg was able to
[6:07] always control remain in control of the company
[6:09] so When they needed to do this huge build out
[6:12] for AI, we know that Meta is spending aggressively
[6:15] on data centers and they have the number one
[6:17] app on the App Store I'm using right now. So
[6:18] they're finally getting the consumer adoption
[6:21] that they always wanted, but it's so insanely
[6:23] expensive for many reasons. The researchers,
[6:26] the data, the data centers, all of it. They need
[6:28] to spend a lot of money. They're spending 35
[6:30] now and $60 billion next year. So that's 95.
[6:34] billion, right? So they're going to spend $100
[6:36] billion in this stock offering and what they
[6:38] have planned next year. But that would dilute
[6:41] Zuckerberg. And in fact, it would dilute him
[6:42] so much that he wouldn't have complete control
[6:45] of the company. And so there was a lot of negotiations
[6:47] that recently happened, and they got finally
[6:50] finalized and approved by the meta board, which
[6:52] essentially keep Zuckerberg in control of the
[6:55] company, even if he's selling some of these shares
[6:58] and quote, unquote, diluting himself, they've
[7:00] created a new class of share, which will continue
[7:02] to give him voting rights and control of the
[7:05] company. And something very similar is happening
[7:07] with Anthropic here because I'm trying to remember
[7:09] the exact numbers of how much the founders of
[7:12] Anthropic have, but they don't have a huge chunk
[7:15] of this company. They don't own 50 .1 % of the
[7:17] company. I think the founders, they might own
[7:20] like, you know, maybe like, I think Dario might
[7:22] own like 5 % of Anthropic or something small
[7:24] like that. They bring so much money. They've
[7:25] all been diluted so much. However... they have
[7:28] created this new class of share, the class F
[7:30] share that has 50 % of the voting power. So 50
[7:33] .1%. So basically they're like, look, we're going
[7:36] to go public. We're going to raise a ton of money.
[7:37] We're going to keep. complete control of the
[7:39] company. And by complete control, I will also
[7:41] say it's the seven founders. Those seven founders
[7:43] still have to agree. It's not like in Meta's
[7:45] case, Zuckerberg, he's kind of like Emperor Zuck,
[7:48] as he's famously known as. He makes all the decisions.
[7:52] And sometimes that's good. Sometimes that's bad.
[7:53] Sometimes he spends, you know, tens of billions
[7:55] of dollars a year on the Metaverse that goes
[7:57] absolutely nowhere. And I guess he could argue
[7:59] that, well, maybe that technology got put into
[8:01] the Meta Ray -Ban glasses and that's the new
[8:02] direction of the company. But ultimately, Reality
[8:04] Labs got shuttered or took a big back burner
[8:07] to the big metaverse vision that he had that
[8:10] never really materialized. So he spent tens of
[8:13] billions of dollars on that. And he was ultimately
[8:14] the one that can make all the decisions. Now,
[8:16] he also was the one that had the guts to say,
[8:20] or I guess the voting shares and the guts to
[8:22] say, look, Meta is going to invest aggressively
[8:24] into AI. And perhaps you could argue that's the
[8:26] reason why Meta is doing so well in the stock
[8:28] market today. And they're staying so relevant
[8:30] is because of making this big push into the future.
[8:32] And he's going to capture a lot of that. So I
[8:34] think both things can be true. So Zuckerberg
[8:36] definitely takes big swings. Sometimes they work
[8:38] out, sometimes they don't. But this is exactly
[8:39] what Anthropic is trying to do in this same situation.
[8:43] They're trying to remain with over 50 % of the
[8:45] voting shares and keep control of the company.
[8:48] Apparently, the customer disclosure shows that
[8:50] they have depth and a lot of concentration in
[8:53] what they're doing. As of September, they had
[8:55] more than 11 ,900 customers that generated at
[8:58] least $100 ,000 in trailing 12 -month revenue.
[9:01] So they have more than 1 ,900 that generated
[9:04] at least $1 million, and they have about 250
[9:06] that generated at least $10 million. You can
[9:09] think of who these 250 is. This is the Fortune
[9:11] 250, right? The top companies are spending over
[9:14] $10 million in anthropic compute. Net revenue
[9:18] retention was about $900 ,000. and trailing 12
[9:21] -month revenue per employee was more than 6 .6
[9:24] million. So for every employee to have over Anthropic,
[9:27] they're making over $6 .6 million a year. And
[9:29] that sounds incredibly profitable. That's up
[9:31] from 1 .4 million, by the way, a year earlier.
[9:34] Roughly one -fifth of revenue came from two customers,
[9:37] which I will also say is pretty wild. It kind
[9:40] of always works like that with the 80 -20 rule,
[9:42] but it's pretty wild that all the revenue is
[9:45] coming from two customers. You could probably
[9:46] imagine. Those customers could be anyone like
[9:50] Microsoft or Amazon. I would probably guess Amazon
[9:53] is one of those two customers. Public investors,
[9:55] once they go public, would buy class A shares,
[9:58] which carry one voting share, a single class
[10:01] F share, which is issued to an LLC owned by the
[10:05] seven co -founders, is now going to have that
[10:06] 50%. So they're going to do it like normal, right?
[10:09] They're going to sell all the shares. Everyone
[10:10] that's buying a class A share is going to get
[10:13] a vote. However, no matter how many shares they
[10:16] sell, 50 % is always going to be owned by this
[10:19] LLC that the co -founders all own. It's a separate
[10:22] class that's been elected by the long -term benefit
[10:25] trust. So Anthropic kind of has this funny structure.
[10:28] They have this long -term quote -unquote benefit
[10:29] trust, and it has, you know, five financially
[10:33] disinterested trustees. They control a majority
[10:35] of board seats. And this structure right now
[10:38] is going to make Anthropic basically a controlled
[10:39] company, according to NASDAQ's rules, although
[10:42] they expect to only use the exemption. covering
[10:45] its nomination and governance committee. So there's
[10:49] only some things they're going to be using it
[10:50] for. Anthropic contributed about 846 million
[10:55] non -voting shares. That's about 5 % fully diluted
[10:58] shares as of June 30th to the public benefit
[11:01] fund subsidiary. So there's all sorts of different
[11:03] subsidiaries and things going on. This is also
[11:06] coming at a time when there's a little bit of
[11:08] drama with the U .S. government. But this is
[11:10] going to be an absolutely colossal IPO. It's
[11:13] going to be fascinating to see what happens here.
[11:14] I'll keep you guys up to date on how much they
[11:16] raise and everything going on there. Thank you
[11:18] so much for tuning into the podcast today. It
[11:20] has been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed
[11:21] this episode, it would help the show out so much
[11:24] if you could leave a rating and review wherever
[11:25] you get your podcasts. And as always, make sure
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[11:44] you guys all in the next episode.

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