# Instant Reaction: Anthropic Files for IPO

An episode of [Stock Movers](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1803209456), 26 Oct 2026, 9:20.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8e704079-ca57-4eac-9741-ae27003e2b7f/35471672-d7b0-4772-a7d1-b4ef00df0528/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=a55c6f22-aa32-4a58-aebd-b2a50138e2b2

Anthropic filed for an IPO, moving a step closer to being the first company focused primarily on developing the most advanced artificial intelligence models to go public. The company behind Claude expects to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT, a filing Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed. For instant reaction, Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney and Jess Menton speak with Bloomberg Executive Editor for Global Tech Peter Elstrom and Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Tech Analyst Mandeep Singh. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
[0:04] Speaker 2: Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 1: Radio.
[0:06] Speaker 3: News.
[0:09] Speaker 1: This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg.
[0:12] Speaker 2: Instant reaction and analysis from our 3,000 journalists and analysts
[0:17] Speaker 2: around the world.
[0:19] Speaker 1: A couple of red headlines crossing the Bloomberg terminal. I
[0:21] Speaker 1: want to get them to you. Anthropic has filed publicly
[0:24] Speaker 1: for its U.S. IPO. One of the things that's just
[0:26] Speaker 1: amazing to me on this Anthropic stuff, first half revenue, $ 16.
[0:28] Speaker 4: 3 billion.
[0:30] Speaker 1: Versus $ 1. 2 billion last year. So big growth in revenue.
[0:34] Speaker 1: But first half net loss, $ 80. 7 billion. So wow, the
[0:39] Speaker 1: numbers are just amazing. Losing a lot more than they're
[0:41] Speaker 1: taking in, I think is the takeaway there. Exactly right.
[0:44] Speaker 2: The ticker symbol A-N-T.
[0:45] Speaker 1: A-N-T. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley running this deal, as you
[0:49] Speaker 1: would expect. Let's get some more reporting on this news.
[0:51] Speaker 1: Peter Elstrom, Executive Editor for Global Technology for Bloomberg News
[0:55] Speaker 1: joins us here. Peter, the numbers are just staggering. Where
[0:59] Speaker 1: to start? What do you make about this highly anticipated IPO?
[1:03] Speaker 4: The S-1 filing just dropped with all the numbers, so
[1:07] Speaker 4: we're all pouring through it right now. I think you
[1:09] Speaker 4: flagged the numbers that people are going to start with.
[1:11] Speaker 4: It's the growth in the losses that they've had as
[1:15] Speaker 4: you mentioned the revenue for the first half was sixteen
[1:17] Speaker 4: point three billion dollars that was up from. One point
[1:20] Speaker 4: two billion- a year earlier but the losses are quite
[1:24] Speaker 4: staggering as you mentioned just over seventy billion dollars. That
[1:27] Speaker 4: includes some special charges- certainly it's not just operating losses
[1:31] Speaker 4: there but- as we look to the S one certainly
[1:34] Speaker 4: people are going to be digging into those details and
[1:36] Speaker 4: see exactly- how they've managed those- that financial performance.
[1:41] Speaker 1: Peter, I'm looking at SpaceX, which is going to be
[1:44] Speaker 1: obviously a comp for this IPO, if for no other
[1:47] Speaker 1: reason than the size here. SpaceX IPO at 135, stocks
[1:50] Speaker 1: now trading at 147. That's a good thing if you're
[1:53] Speaker 1: trying to bring another mega deal. What do you think
[1:56] Speaker 1: the strategies of this management team is when they get
[2:00] Speaker 1: on the road here? Because it's such a big deal here.
[2:03] Speaker 4: It's an enormous deal, and certainly the markets have been
[2:05] Speaker 4: a bit skittish about AI investments of late. Certainly, we've
[2:10] Speaker 4: seen that with CoreWeave in particular, that on the credit side,
[2:13] Speaker 4: there are some growing concerns about how these companies are
[2:16] Speaker 4: going to be able to execute of course anthropic sits
[2:18] Speaker 4: in a different uh... part of the value chain uh...
[2:22] Speaker 4: with their frontier model um... clawed getting lots of revenue
[2:25] Speaker 4: generating lots of revenue uh... at this point uh... they
[2:29] Speaker 4: have a message at the top of the s one
[2:31] Speaker 4: where dario on the day the c e o his
[2:33] Speaker 4: sister daniella daniella uh... in the rest of the founding
[2:37] Speaker 4: team lay out their principles for this and certainly they're
[2:40] Speaker 4: talking about a eyes one of the most impactful technologies
[2:44] Speaker 4: of our generation, I think they're going to try to
[2:46] Speaker 4: get investors excited about the opportunities that lie ahead of us,
[2:50] Speaker 4: that this is not just about building out this infrastructure,
[2:52] Speaker 4: but then using that technology to solve a bunch of
[2:55] Speaker 4: other problems that we see in the future. And they
[2:57] Speaker 4: articulate with a very substantial opening memo in the S-1.
[3:02] Speaker 4: There are risk factors, though. We probably want to talk
[3:04] Speaker 4: about those, too.
[3:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, tell us about that, then.
[3:06] Speaker 1: What are the risk factors?
[3:08] Speaker 4: Certainly, there are pages and pages of risk factors. It
[3:10] Speaker 4: looks like roughly 100, almost 100 pages of risk factors.
[3:13] Speaker 2: They've talked about this in the past.
[3:16] Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly. We talked about this a couple months ago
[3:19] Speaker 4: when they had one of their researchers resign and warn
[3:23] Speaker 4: about how the Frontier Labs were gambling with human lives.
[3:27] Speaker 4: So certainly they are raising questions about the ability to
[3:31] Speaker 4: control AI, what it's going to do for the economy,
[3:34] Speaker 4: for job losses, for all these things that we've heard
[3:36] Speaker 4: over the past few weeks. And they articulate that in
[3:39] Speaker 4: quite a bit of detail in the S-1.
[3:42] Speaker 1: Peter, what do we know about the timing here, when
[3:45] Speaker 1: they might start a roadshow, when they would like to
[3:47] Speaker 1: maybe price this thing? What do we know so far?
[3:50] Speaker 4: Well, we've heard so far that they do want to
[3:51] Speaker 4: get this done before Thanksgiving, so the window is closing there.
[3:56] Speaker 4: There's a period of time where investors get to digest
[3:59] Speaker 4: this information. There'll be a roadshow where management will go
[4:03] Speaker 4: out and talk with investors. Certainly, the investment bankers are
[4:06] Speaker 4: going to play a central role in how those conversations
[4:09] Speaker 4: go and how they articulate the message there. They'll meet
[4:11] Speaker 4: with investors, answer their questions, and then the goal will
[4:14] Speaker 4: be to float after that. All right.
[4:16] Speaker 1: I've written a lot of prospectuses in my day, and
[4:18] Speaker 1: I never had a risk section that includes this. Anthropic
[4:23] Speaker 1: warns of catastrophic existential risk to humanity. How do you
[4:27] Speaker 1: price that one?
[4:29] Speaker 2: I don't know, Jess.
[4:30] Speaker 1: How does that work? I like the way Bloomberg News
[4:32] Speaker 1: characterizes it here. Anthropic files for IPO to become first
[4:37] Speaker 1: frontier AI lab to list. Going first, that's big. Mandeep
[4:41] Speaker 1: Singh joins us here. He's head of all the technology
[4:44] Speaker 1: research for Bloomberg Intelligence. Mandeep, what's the story you think
[4:48] Speaker 1: Anthropic needs to tell when they start the roadshow? What
[4:51] Speaker 1: does the street really need to hear?
[4:53] Speaker 3: I think they have a really nice chart in the
[4:55] Speaker 3: S1 on compute efficiency, which is efficiency, which is basically
[5:00] Speaker 3: saying for every dollar of compute. we have a much
[5:05] Speaker 3: better trend in terms of revenue that we are able
[5:08] Speaker 3: to generate. In other words, that's a proxy for gross margins,
[5:12] Speaker 3: and gross margins are inching closer to 50%, whereas just
[5:17] Speaker 3: a quarter back, it was like sub 20%. So clearly,
[5:22] Speaker 3: they are showing that even though this is a variable cost,
[5:26] Speaker 3: high variable cost business, we are able to improve our
[5:30] Speaker 3: margins and that's driven by the scale that they have.
[5:34] Speaker 5: Well, Paul and I were talking about how within the filing,
[5:37] Speaker 5: it was talking about risks, how the catastrophic existential risks
[5:41] Speaker 5: to humanity. How do you price something like that when
[5:44] Speaker 5: it's in this type of report?
[5:47] Speaker 3: Well, I mean, what they are saying, and this is
[5:49] Speaker 3: very typical of, you know, a risk disclosure for any
[5:51] Speaker 3: new technology IPO. They will say, you know, a worst
[5:55] Speaker 3: case scenario is where things, you know, get out of
[5:58] Speaker 3: hand just to make sure that, you know, they avoid liabilities.
[6:03] Speaker 3: in terms of something like this, where you are developing
[6:06] Speaker 3: a model. We know these models have had cybersecurity issues.
[6:11] Speaker 3: And I think it's very typical of any risk disclosure
[6:16] Speaker 3: of a new technology company going public.
[6:18] Speaker 1: Again, I was just looking at the Bloomberg News reporting
[6:21] Speaker 1: that maybe they've talked down their valuation of this company
[6:25] Speaker 1: a little bit. Does that just reflect Kind of the
[6:28] Speaker 1: tech market, maybe the AI story getting a little bit
[6:31] Speaker 1: of pushback over the last several weeks, months?
[6:33] Speaker 3: Yes, I think the whole backdrop isn't as good as
[6:38] Speaker 3: it was maybe three, four months back. And SpaceX probably
[6:42] Speaker 3: timed it better in that perspective. But to my mind,
[6:46] Speaker 3: I think a company like Anthropic, when it has such power,
[6:50] Speaker 3: fast growth with improving margins, it's a good story.
[6:54] Speaker 2: To go out to investors with.
[6:55] Speaker 3: So even though the bankers may price the IPO conservatively,
[7:00] Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised, you know, that's to make sure
[7:03] Speaker 3: that the IPO is oversubscribed.
[7:05] Speaker 5: What do you think this tells us to more broadly
[7:07] Speaker 5: about some of these other delayed IPOs that have been
[7:09] Speaker 5: in the pipeline as far as just like the demand
[7:11] Speaker 5: for something like this?
[7:13] Speaker 3: Yeah, you need the scale of someone like Entropic to
[7:16] Speaker 3: go out to investors with right now. If you are
[7:18] Speaker 3: a subscale player where you don't have an improving margin
[7:23] Speaker 3: story along with top line growth, That's when you pull
[7:26] Speaker 3: back your IPO. And we saw that with a few
[7:28] Speaker 3: of the smaller names where I bet you the margins
[7:31] Speaker 3: weren't really improving, whereas Entropic can do it because they
[7:35] Speaker 3: have the scale. And they are obviously, you know, the
[7:38] Speaker 3: poster child when it comes to this new business model
[7:41] Speaker 3: of LLMs.
[7:43] Speaker 1: For most IPOs, one of the critical factors is management
[7:47] Speaker 1: because you don't know them. And you kind of got
[7:49] Speaker 1: to make an assessment of the quality of management. What
[7:51] Speaker 1: do we know about this management team?
[7:54] Speaker 2: Not a whole lot.
[7:55] Speaker 3: And I think you bring up a very good point
[7:57] Speaker 3: that they don't have the track record as someone in
[8:02] Speaker 3: terms of having seasoned executives and whatnot.
[8:04] Speaker 2: Although they did bring in a new.
[8:06] Speaker 3: CFO a few months back who I think was front
[8:10] Speaker 3: and center with this IPO process. And I do think
[8:14] Speaker 3: it made a difference in terms of the disclosures around
[8:18] Speaker 3: that $ 750 billion in commitment number. How does that translate
[8:23] Speaker 3: into the income statement and what sort of obligations they have?
[8:27] Speaker 3: So from that perspective, I think they do have a
[8:30] Speaker 3: steady hand in terms of the new CFO that they
[8:33] Speaker 3: have brought in.
[8:34] Speaker 5: So what's the next thing you're watching for after this
[8:36] Speaker 5: report just dropped?
[8:38] Speaker 2: It has to be the IPO pricing.
[8:39] Speaker 3: And the bankers will price the IPO within, I would say,
[8:44] Speaker 3: 10 days or so.
[8:46] Speaker 2: And then the roadshow will begin.
[8:48] Speaker 3: So to my mind, where they price the IPO, to
[8:51] Speaker 3: Paul's point, if they're too aggressive, then there is a risk,
[8:55] Speaker 3: you know, there could be disappointment.
[8:56] Speaker 2: Although I think going.
[8:58] Speaker 3: By the rumors, they're going to price it conservatively so
[9:02] Speaker 3: that you have a big first day IPO pop.
[9:05] Speaker 2: And I think that will be good.
[9:06] Speaker 1: All right, Mandeep, thank you so much. We appreciate it.
[9:08] Speaker 1: Mandeep Singh, nobody better to chat up this anthropic S1
[9:12] Speaker 1: than Mandeep Singh. He runs all of our tech research
[9:14] Speaker 1: at Bloomberg Intelligence.

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