Anthropic's IPO lists 93 pages of risks. What could go wrong?

Anthropic’s planned IPO requires investors to reckon with the threat posed by AI. “This is not an ordinary technology risk,” one expert said.

When Anthropic registered for its widely anticipated initial public offering on Monday, the artificial intelligence developer framed its technology as potentially game-changing for all of humanity. A dangerous game. Nearly a third of the 335-page securities filing is devoted to outlining not only the routine risks any company might face as it seeks to grow its business, but also the extraordinary risks that Anthropic's frontier models could pose. To be sure, companies planning to go public commonly disclose a sprawling set of risks in their IPO filings, noted Jay Ritter, an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business. Yet the extensive risk section in Anthropic's S-1 filing also highlights a financial and operational tension at the heart of AI companies as they pitch themselves to investors.

The value of artificial intelligence businesses, which in Anthropic's case is expected to top $1 trillion, depends on the continued spread of a technology that even its developers acknowledge could cause worldwide harm. Read on for a snapshot of the risks Anthropic outlines in its IPO. Anthropic, which developed the Claude chatbot, notes in the IPO filing that its technology could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity," a stark contrast to the company's founding mission to build AI for the "benefit of humanity." "The company is asking