Washington (United States) (AFP) – Anthropic, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, on Monday reported a more than 1,100 percent surge in quarterly revenue as it counts down to going public on Wall Street later this month. Anthropic’s listing, expected as early as next week, comes amid growing nervousness among investors about the huge sums being poured into AI. Revenue reached $17 billion in the third quarter, up from $1.4 billion a year earlier.
The company, whose stock market debut will help determine how long the AI spending boom lifting the US economy can last, said in an amended filing that its net loss reached $23.3 billion in the July-September period. The loss stemmed mostly from non-cash accounting charges linked to the company’s rising valuation, the filing showed. The filing also showed Anthropic has committed to spend about $895 billion, mostly on computing power, much of it over the next five years. It slipped back to an operating loss of $567 million in the third quarter as it paid more for short-term computing capacity.
The IPO will be a major test of the market’s faith in the AI boom, with the pool of potential investors set to widen as retail traders get their first chance to buy shares directly in a standalone AI giant. Last week, skittishness about AI spending triggered a sharp sell-off in big tech stocks after the latest earnings showed massive investment without clear enough signs of a return.
Anthropic’s roughly 400-page filing devotes more than 90 pages to risks, including those facing an industry that has seen a string of reports in recent months of AI systems behaving in unexpected and harmful ways.
© 2024 AFP
