Leaked Anthropic IPO Filing Shows $42 Billion Loss, $518 Billion in Future Costs

Since Anthropic confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC in June 2026, the company's leaked IPO numbers have become central to debate in tech finance.

Reuters reviewed the confidential prospectus and reported the core numbers: revenue of nearly $4.6 billion in 2025, up roughly twelvefold from $400 million in 2024. Nearly a quarter of that revenue came from just two customers, according to Reuters.

The growth came with staggering losses. Anthropic's net loss hit about $42 billion in 2025, up from $8.31 billion in 2024, according to the prospectus cited by The Week India and Calcalist Tech. About $34 billion of that figure was a noncash accounting charge tied to the rising estimated value of financing that could convert into company shares, not cash spent running the business, per Business Insider and Calcalist Tech. Strip that out and the operating loss was still roughly $8.06 to $8.1 billion, according to Calcalist Tech and the International Business Times UK.

Compute and infrastructure spending alone hit $7.33 billion in 2025, more than triple the prior year and over half of Anthropic's $12.64 to $12.65 billion in total operating expenses, multiple outlets reported from the same Reuters review.

The $518 billion problem

The bigger number is what's still coming. Anthropic has committed to at least $518 billion in future cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations, according to Reuters. About 80% of that is non-cancellable or payable regardless of usage, the International Business Times UK reported.

The breakdown: $111.1 billion with Google, $110 billion with Amazon, $31.4 billion with Microsoft, and $161.2 billion in largely non-cancellable equipment leases tied to Broadcom, per the IBT UK report citing the filing. Anthropic also has up to $84.5 billion with xAI for Nvidia-based capacity through 2029, which IBT UK notes is largely cancellable on 90 days' notice, plus more than $20 billion with AMD, which is separately investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic.

The filing itself flags the conflict of interest: Google, Amazon and Microsoft are simultaneously Anthropic's investors, customers, cloud suppliers and, in some respects, competitors, according to IBT UK. Anthropic's own risk disclosure warns those relationships "can create incentives that are not fully aligned with its own."

Anthropic had $20.28 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2025, per Reuters as cited by IBT UK. Reuters also reported the company's annualized revenue run rate had topped $65 billion by the end of July 2026, and that Anthropic is projecting $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue by 2028, a forecast rather than a reported figure.

Wall Street is not sold

Chamath Palihapitiya, speaking before the prospectus leaked and doubling down afterward on X, predicted the eventual IPO price will land near $1 trillion or below, not the roughly $2 trillion figure circulating, calling it "a trillion-dollar haircut before a single share trades," according to Tikr. His reasoning: at ten times sales, institutional buyers still get a cushion if things go wrong, while Anthropic still walks away with roughly $200 billion to spend.

Venture investor Paul Kedrosky took a harder line on The Prof G Pod, arguing the IPO has stopped functioning as a financing event and become a liquidity event for insiders, according to BigGo Finance. "When you look around the poker table and wonder who the sucker is, it's you," Kedrosky told host Ed Elson, framing retail investors and "quick-flip institutions" as the buyers absorbing insider exits.

AI critic Gary Marcus, cited by Business Insider, put it more bluntly on X: "Anthropic's proposed valuation is easily calculated, as -50 times 2025 losses. The more they lose, the more they win!" Marcus also argued investors are pricing the IPO while "largely ignoring" Anthropic's own stated catastrophic-risk estimates.

Equity analyst Ross Hendricks questioned the sheer size of the infrastructure commitment on X, asking, "Just a casual mention of raising half a trillion in a single year, really? Does anyone believe this?" according to The Week India. Hendricks separately noted, via Business Insider, that roughly $34 billion of the 2025 loss never actually left the company's accounts.

Not every read is bearish. An analyst identified by Business Insider only as Akoner argued the 2025 revenue growth shows real demand acceleration, even while calling the $8.1 billion operating loss the "more meaningful figure" because Anthropic is "a long way from proving it can turn rapid revenue growth into sustainable profits." Akoner also said a successful IPO could pull investment toward Anthropic and away from other tech names, and set the stage for OpenAI's own anticipated public listing.

The 80-page warning

Anthropic devoted roughly 80 of the prospectus's 261 pages to risk factors, according to the Financial Times as cited by Business Insider and separately confirmed by Calcalist Tech, warning investors that the AI systems it builds could pose catastrophic or even existential risks to humanity. CEO Dario Amodei has publicly argued for a slower pace of AI development to manage those risks, a position The Week India notes predates the IPO filing. The extensive risk disclosure can be read as either alarming or as an unusually candid level of transparency rarely volunteered by companies seeking public capital. The prospectus does not hide the tension, it states it outright.

Reuters reported Anthropic is targeting an IPO after the November 2026 midterm elections, with the company stressing the listing depends on market conditions. No final valuation, pricing, or listing date has been confirmed. Prediction markets tracked by Crypto Briefing currently assign low odds to Anthropic hitting the highest valuation targets discussed by year-end, suggesting the skepticism voiced by Palihapitiya and Kedrosky is shared, at least partially, by traders betting real money on the outcome.

What happens next depends on whether Anthropic's revenue run rate keeps climbing toward its own $190-200 billion 2028 projection, and whether Google, Amazon and Microsoft keep honoring contracts that run through 2033 and 2036 even if demand cools. Separately, Jay Ritter, an IPO researcher cited by BigGo Finance, noted that fitness-tracker maker Oura recently postponed its own listing, and that most companies which pause an IPO never end up going public at all.