San Francisco (United States) (AFP) – Anthropic, the OpenAI rival that bet everything on computer coding, is expected to go public within weeks in a listing that could eclipse SpaceX’s record Wall Street debut in June. Here are five things to know about the company:
– **Built from OpenAI**
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives frustrated over how the potential of AI and concerns over safety were not understood or being taken seriously enough. The company — whose name means, somewhat paradoxically, “relating to human beings” — is led by CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei, a San Francisco native with a PhD in biophysics from Princeton University, not computer engineering like so many of his Big Tech peers. His sister Daniela is also a co-founder and the company’s president. Anthropic has 5,000 employees, according to PitchBook.
– **Upstart**
Until this year, Anthropic was in clear second place to OpenAI, which burst onto the scene with ChatGPT in November 2022, transforming the tech industry and triggering an AI arms race. But as OpenAI rolled out products from video creation to web browsers, Anthropic aimed far more narrowly, focusing on building the best platform for computer programmers. That strategy has paid off spectacularly — coding is the rare AI skill that users are willing to pay handsomely for. Claude Code, its assistant for developers, has become one of the company’s most popular products, helping push projected annual revenue to $65 billion. Only a small percentage of ChatGPT users, meanwhile, pay a subscription fee — and OpenAI has put video AI and other side projects on the back burner.
– **Trump vs. Anthropic**
The momentum comes despite severe political headwinds, with Anthropic at loggerheads with the Trump administration — a state of affairs that could give investors pause. In March, the government broke off its contracts with Anthropic and designated the company a supply chain risk after it refused to grant the military unfettered access to its AI models. Anthropic called the Defense Department’s move unconstitutional retaliation, and the two sides are now locked in a legal battle that could take years to resolve. The White House also bristles at Amodei’s repeated warnings about the dangers of AI — including the impact on jobs — and his calls to regulate its deployment like airlines or banks. Amodei is also linked with effective altruism, a philosophy of targeted charitable giving scorned by conservatives in Silicon Valley and Washington.
– **Big money needed**
Like OpenAI, Anthropic has massive needs for the computing power and infrastructure required to build so-called frontier models that stay ahead of competitors, amid fears that China could catch up. Both have raised money at unprecedented levels, with Anthropic valued at just under one trillion dollars when it raised $65 billion in May. With venture capitalists — and even sovereign wealth funds — no longer able to play in that league, higher sums can only be found on the public markets. This is a risky step that will probably determine whether a business model exists for Anthropic’s vision of the AI revolution. OpenAI, after initially promising an IPO this year as well, is now signaling it will wait until 2027.
– **Stomaching the losses**
According to Bloomberg, Anthropic intends to surpass the record $86.2 billion that Elon Musk’s SpaceX raised in its June IPO. SpaceX, which absorbed Musk’s AI startup xAI before going public, made its listing a partial AI bet, too. Its shares skyrocketed initially before coming back down to earth, and now sit at about their $135 offering price. Anthropic’s investors will likewise have to stomach huge losses for the foreseeable future. The company, according to US media reports, lost almost $42 billion in 2025 and will likely keep bleeding cash for years. To lure investors, according to the Wall Street Journal, Anthropic will promise that revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion.
© 2024 AFP
