Anthropic prepares for a massive IPO amid warnings of AI job displacement

The road to the Nasdaq

Anthropic, the creator of the Claude chatbot, is preparing to enter the public markets. The company officially filed its prospectus, a public S-1 form detailing its business operations and risks, on October 26. It intends to list on the Nasdaq under the stock symbol ANT.

The offering could rank among the biggest debut listings in the history of the global stock market. According to reports from Reuters, investors are currently valuing the company at between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. The company plans to sell its shares to the public as soon as around Thanksgiving.

While the IPO marks a major financial milestone, it also brings a new level of transparency. Once the company goes public, it is expected to be fully exposed to investors, meaning it must disclose far more about how it spends and makes its money.

Warnings on the labor market

Despite the financial growth, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has issued a stark warning about the technology's impact on workers. During a May 2025 interview, he suggested that artificial intelligence could more than double the U.S. unemployment rate within one to five years. This comes as the company moves toward a more public-facing role.

Professional forecaster Marcos Ortega of Metaculus expects the U.S. unemployment rate to reach between 8% and 10% in about five years. This would be roughly double the current 4.2% rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, Ortega notes that mass layoffs might not happen immediately because companies will likely keep experienced employees who understand specific internal workflows.

The transition is expected to hit knowledge work—jobs performed primarily at a computer—the hardest. Ortega suggests that physical robots will improve but not fast enough to displace many people in manufacturing or construction. He specifically notes that finance and computer science graduates are vulnerable because their work is easier for AI to validate and learn.

Who will hold the power

A major point of discussion for investors is how much control the original creators will maintain. According to the prospectus, the group of seven co-founders will keep 50.1% of the voting rights on major shareholder decisions by using a single special share. These rights will only begin to phase out once two or fewer founders remain.

This high level of founder control is common in the tech industry, similar to Mark Zuckerberg's 60.8% of voting power at Meta. However, some experts argue that AI companies are different because their effects on labor and science are visible before they hit the market. This creates a unique situation where the social consequences of the technology are immediate.

To balance this power, an independent body called the Long-Term Benefit Trust will fill four of Anthropic's seven board seats. Trustees serve one-year terms and elect their own successors. Some researchers have questioned how independently this trust would act if its judgment about the company's mission diverged from the leadership's goals.

The path to profitability

The massive valuation of the IPO puts significant pressure on Anthropic to prove its business model. New Constructs, an investment research firm, noted that to justify a $2 trillion valuation, Anthropic would need to reach about $3.6 trillion in annual revenue by 2035. This would require growing from roughly $4.6 billion in 2025.

The firm's report suggests Anthropic would need to earn roughly twice the after-tax operating profit that Nvidia made over the past year. Analysts have pointed out that some AI companies argue they are profitable only if you ignore the massive costs of compute, which is the computing power required to run the models. One analyst noted, "Well, that's the cost of your business."

History shows that big tech companies often go years without reporting a profit after going public. For example, Amazon did not report a profitable quarter until the end of 2001, nearly four years after its 1997 IPO. Investors will be watching closely to see if Anthropic can navigate these same hurdles while scaling its workforce-disrupting technology.