Anthropic filed its S-1, or prospectus, with the SEC on Monday.
The AI developer behind Claude has not yet set the price for its initial public offering (IPO). But expectations have aligned on a valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.
According to the filing, Anthropic generated $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion last year. But the company remains unprofitable, with an operating loss of $693 million and a net loss of $80.7 billion during the period.
I don’t have much more to say about Anthropic. Others are far more sophisticated and eloquent on the company and the businesses it’s engaged in.
But I do have a few quick thoughts on the chatter around the news.
I don’t know if the stock will go up or down. That’s what I said in June, when SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion. At the time, market commentators on TV, X, Substack, and elsewhere confidently asserted the valuation was ridiculous, and the stock was doomed to fall. Maybe it does eventually. But as of Monday afternoon, SpaceX was trading at about $148 per share, giving the company a market cap of north of $2 trillion. It’s fine to have views that conflict with the market. But don’t be surprised if the market goes against you for extended periods, even if you are eventually proven right.
Earnings expectations matter. Anthropic is not profitable. But a company’s valuation depends less on what it earned (or lost) in the past and more on what it’s expected to earn in the years to come. To be fair, the current state of operations helps shape what those future earnings will look like. Then again, companies often change their business models over time. An unprofitable company trading at a positive market value reflects investor confidence that it will eventually turn profitable.
IPOs don’t have a great track record. According to data compiled by University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, the average IPO delivers a strong first-day return, with a “pop” of about 19%. But if you had held the average IPO for three years, you would’ve underperformed the market by about 21%. SpaceX actually jumped 19% on its first day. Maybe Anthropic does something similar. And maybe both lag the market for the next three years. We’ll see.
Money won’t be your biggest problem if AI destroys humanity. Many people are amplifying Anthropic’s warning that AI could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.” That’s obviously a major societal concern. But as a stock market investor, I wouldn’t view this risk alone as a reason to sell. If we do experience an existential catastrophe, having money might not be your biggest concern. It seems smarter to keep money in the market because, if there's no catastrophe, you won’t have lost money worrying about a low-probability risk. If a catastrophe does hit, what you lose in the market will likely be low on your list of priorities. But just in case, keep some matches, a knife, and a portable water filter on hand.
Some of these thoughts might sound familiar to paid subscribers who read the June 10 newsletter. In that issue, I also addressed concerns for market indexes and index-fund investors.
For your convenience, I republished that newsletter below.