Anthropic is engaging with prospective investors ahead of a potentially historic public offering, yet its chief executive is simultaneously championing a slowdown in AI development. The five-year-old company, targeting a $2 trillion valuation, now faces a delicate balancing act as it prepares for what could be one of the most significant market debuts in recent memory.

The path to the IPO for Anthropic has suddenly become more complicated. The developer behind the Claude large language model is courting potential investors for a milestone listing, while co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is advocating for a position that seems at odds with these ambitions: decelerating the pace of AI research. With a valuation already at $650 billion earlier this year and an IPO filing submitted in June, market watchers widely anticipate a listing as soon as next month.

In recent weeks, concerns over the potential risks associated with advanced AI models have intensified, with a growing number of researchers warning about existential threats to humanity. Against this backdrop, Amodei published a lengthy essay over the weekend calling for the AI industry to moderate its model iteration speed. He proposed a three-step approach to manage the pace of model capability advancement "without sacrificing commercial advantages or ceding America's AI leadership position."

For secondary market investors, this adds another layer of complexity: determining an appropriate valuation for a company that, despite being only five years old, ranks among the world's most valuable enterprises with an IPO target of $2 trillion. Some experts believe that even if Anthropic's revenue growth faces pressure, proactively advocating for slower development could help the company cultivate a responsible industry image, mitigate future legal liabilities, and address rising anti-AI sentiment across the nation.

Where investors should focus

Stock analyst Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson noted in an interview that investors may not necessarily view this development as negative. "The premise isn't that the company is actually saying 'we're abandoning the IPO, we're not consuming compute, we're not training new models' — and they haven't made any such statement," Luria said.

Anthropic has selected Nasdaq as its listing exchange, a detail first reported by Business Insider. Amodei put forward three recommendations on Saturday: AI companies should accept evaluation by third-party organizations; frontier AI firms should establish "universal safety standards"; and democratic nations should coordinate with authoritarian governments where feasible. The blog post came shortly after multiple industry researchers publicly warned about the potentially devastating harms of AI technology.

OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX which owns xAI (developer of Grok), have both expressed support for Amodei's proposals. SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history in June at a $2 trillion valuation. OpenAI has also confidentially filed for its own IPO but has recently been embroiled in controversy — its AI agent reportedly escaped its test environment, accessed public networks, and infiltrated the open-source platform Hugging Face.

Timing considerations for the listing

Altman stated bluntly in an interview that "now is not a good time to go public," reiterating that OpenAI plans to wait until next year to proceed with its IPO. The company's CFO told employees at an all-hands meeting last month that the AI lab would complete its listing in 2027. Lise Buyer, a partner at IPO advisory firm Class V Group, believes the "AI could destroy humanity" alarmism will not alter the IPO timeline but could influence valuations.

"The market is betting on long-term prospects, and now considerations around technological controls are layered on top," Buyer wrote in an email. "Whether the IPO happens in the fourth quarter, next year, or at another time, the high-growth narrative of these companies, along with the significant risk factors that are taken seriously, will remain on the table." Both Anthropic and OpenAI declined to comment on this report.

Growth trajectory appears unbroken

Earlier reports indicated Anthropic reached an annualized revenue of $65 billion in July, representing roughly sevenfold year-over-year growth. The Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that Anthropic has told some shareholders it expects to post operating profit for the second consecutive quarter. Matt Murphy, a partner at Menlo Ventures and an Anthropic investor, described the growth rate as "absurdly high." He suggested that going public would force Anthropic to enhance business transparency, which could help ease societal resistance to AI.

"I don't see any reason why growth should slow down, nor is there any need to delay the IPO," Murphy said. Pew Research Center data shows that more than half of Americans feel more concern than excitement about AI's proliferation in daily life, up from just 37% in 2021. A separate poll of 18-34 year olds revealed troubling trust levels in AI executives — over 75% of respondents do not believe Amodei will make responsible decisions, and roughly 70% hold similar views of Altman.

Buyer of Class V Group suggested: "Perhaps an earlier IPO is better than later — the accountability mechanisms that come with being a public company could be something many people value highly." Brad Gerstner, founder of Altimeter Capital, which has invested in both Anthropic and OpenAI, posted on social media Saturday that enhancing transparency, external oversight, and accountability in the AI industry is crucial. He indicated Anthropic will likely continue with its IPO plans. "The market knows how to price risk — just look at SpaceX. Capital's appetite for investing in top AI companies is very strong."

Just one day before that statement, Gerstner had criticized the doomsday rhetoric from some researchers in an interview, calling it "alarmist and politically motivated."

Competitive dynamics at play

Several observers have questioned Amodei's stance. One perspective suggests stricter safety standards could actually benefit Anthropic: it possesses the most powerful current models and monetizes them through services like Claude Code, while smaller competitors may struggle to afford the substantial safety, evaluation, and protective investments required for frontier models. Arun Chandrasekaran, an analyst at Gartner, noted: "If smaller competitors can't afford the rigorous safety, evaluation, and security investments needed for frontier models, this actually benefits Anthropic and OpenAI."

Luria of D.A. Davidson shares this view, characterizing the behavior of Anthropic and OpenAI as having "monopolistic overtones." According to Wired, OpenAI has already consulted members of Congress about whether industry-wide coordinated slowdowns in AI development would violate antitrust regulations. Luria remarked: "I highly suspect the true motivations of Anthropic and OpenAI — this increasingly looks like 'pulling up the ladder,' raising the barrier for latecomers."

Broader implications for the technology sector

Technology investors are closely monitoring the research pace of both companies, as they account for a massive share of AI infrastructure procurement. Anthropic has signed multiple enormous compute orders this year with partners including Nscale, AMD, SpaceX, and Google. OpenAI disclosed to investors in February a target of approximately $600 billion in total compute investment by 2030. Both companies are heavy purchasers of Nvidia GPUs.

Lo Toney, a managing partner at Plexo Capital and an Anthropic investor, said: "I want to understand how resource allocation for frontier model training, post-training, and inference will shift once various safety controls are layered in." Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at PitchBook, is more concerned about growth stagnation. He argues that model companies deserve valuation discounts, primarily because investors struggle to be confident these firms can safely commercialize their technology.

"Would a public company's primary priority really be dealing with a bunch of security vulnerabilities? No. Companies would most likely prioritize capturing the markets they promised investors in the first place," Rolfes said. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, noted that any perceived slowdown in development would be negative for stocks, since current prices already factor in expectations of "continuous exponential model iteration." However, he also predicted: "The status quo won't fundamentally change — the AI technology race will continue."

"The long-term AI market is far too massive for companies to actually hit the brakes. I believe this rhetoric is more about easing regulatory pressure."