Tech Brew Ride Home - We Have The Anthropic IPO Numbers

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Anthropic's IPO prospectus finally surfaced: a $42B net loss on $4.6B in revenue, a quarter of it from two customers. OpenAI scrapped GPT-6.1 Astra over safety, Oura postponed its IPO, and I wondered whether intelligence is becoming a commodity. ⁠THIS IS THE YOUTUBE VIDEO OF MY RANT⁠ IPO prospectus: Anthropic reports a net loss of $42B in 2025, with operating losses of $8B+; revenue grew 12x to ~$4.6B, ~25% of which came from two customers (Reuters) Anthropic formally warns investors its technology may pose "existential risks to humanity," devoting almost a third of its S-1 to risk factors including AI manipulation and blackmail (FT) Anthropic's IPO filing creates a "Founder LLC" of its seven co-founders, whose majority vote directs a single Class F share with 50.1% of voting power, while the company stays a PBC (Reuters) OpenAI scraps plans to publicly launch GPT-6.1 Astra, saying it didn't quite meet its safety bar during internal testing, after targeting an October release (WSJ) Oura says it is delaying its Nasdaq IPO due to uncertainty in the market, despite "strong demand" and a strengthening of its business since the process started (CNBC) Sources: OpenAI's ARR is nearing $70B, growing 70%+ since the beginning of Q3, with B2B revenue up 100%+; it added more consumer revenue in Q3 than all of 2025 (Axios) Claude Code vs. OpenAI Codex ARR: Codex never slowed after Claude Code's crossover while Claude Code appears to have plateaued, and Opus mentions on GitHub spiked after Opus 5.5 as GPT-6 mentions dropped (TickerTrends) THIS IS THE YOUTUBE VIDEO OF MY RANT

Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, September 29th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. Anthropics IPO prospectus finally surfaced a $42 billion net loss on $4.6 billion in revenue and a quarter of that from just two customers. Opening eye scrapped, GPT6.1 Astra over safety or a postpone its IPO. And I wonder whether Anthropic needs to rush its IPO before people get wise to something. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Every day, shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. Now you can make your voice heard too. Vanguard investor choice makes it easy to set your proxy voting preference for your eligible Vanguard index funds, whether you hold a Vanguard

fund directly or through another brokerage firm. All it takes is a few clicks to select your proxy voting preference and be heard on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections. Visit vanguard.com slash investor choice to learn more. It's your shares, it's your voice, it's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of our index funds and those funds own shares of the companies they invest in, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. Reuters have seen Anthropics IPO Bechtus, so we finally have Anthropics numbers. Here are the headlines. Anthropic reports a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. With operating losses of $8 billion, revenue did grow 12x last year to around $4.6 billion,

but around 25% of that came from just two customers, quoting Reuters. Anthropic is making a massive bet that AI will transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity, and the Internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. But the cost to get there will be staggering. Anthropic reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025 and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud computing and infrastructure obligations in coming years, according to the prospectus. The prospectus details how the company has grown sharply in the last year, while also posting wider losses. Revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, even as the company

lost more than $8 billion on an operating basis, excluding write-downs of various liabilities, mostly tied to previous fundraising, according to the documents reported here for the first time. The public sale, which could value it at more than $2 trillion, would capitalize on the rapid rise of the AI startup lab that only came into existence five years ago and establish it as a benchmark for how Wall Street values AI's leading companies, including rival OpenAI. The AI lab spent $7.33 billion on compute and infrastructure last year, a threefold surge from 2024 accounting for more than half of its $12.65 billion. in total operating expenses. Anthropics' public market debut is likely to be pushed to after the November U.S. midterm elections. Reuters previously reported citing sources. The sale would bring public investors into an AI race that has been until now underwritten

by venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, and big tech companies. Anthropics' expected valuation target is more than double its own estimated valuation of $965 billion in May. The near $42 billion net loss included a roughly. roughly $34 billion accounting charge that reflected an increase in the estimated value of financing that could eventually turn into Anthropic shares rather than money the company spent running its business. Anthropics said nearly a quarter of its revenue came from two customers last year, and as part of its risk factors warned that many of its largest clients were not locked

into long-term contracts and could cut or stop spending. Anthropic had cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaling $20.28 billion as of December 31st, the prospectus shows, end quote. Quoting the F.T. Anthropic has formerly warned investors that its technology may pose, quote, existential risks to humanity in a long-awaited initial public offering prospectus circulated with a small group of partners in recent days. The nearly $1 trillion AI startup led by Dario Amadai devoted almost a third of its lengthy S-1 filing to detailing risk factors, including the potential of increasingly advanced AI models to manipulate blackmail and exhibit other unpredictable behaviors. Anthropic outlined more prosaic risks, including the extreme concentration of its customer base with close to a quarter of revenue last year coming from just two clients, according to people familiar with the filing.

The extraordinary warnings in its risk disclosures add to the challenge faced by public market investors in valuing the leading US AI group when it launches what is expected to be the most highly valued IPO of all time. end quote. And quoting Reuters again. Anthropic has long positioned itself as the virtuous AI company. An early look at its IPO filing shows how it is creating a new founder LLC vehicle aimed at serving the common good while insulating its leaders from market forces. The new LLC will be made up initially of Anthropics seven co-founders, including CEO Dario Amadai, individuals who are distinctly equipped to be stewards of our mission. According to a copy of the filing scene, by Reuters, Anthraps' mission is to benefit humanity through responsible AI. The developer of Claude AI will also continue to operate as a public benefit corporation or PBC under Delaware law,

formally allowing leaders to balance the interests of investors and the rest of humanity, the filing states. Under this arrangement, a majority vote of the seven co-founders will direct a single share of Class F stock that amounts to 50.1% of the total voting power over key corporate matters, including the election of some board directors and other matters submitted to investors. Anthropics for other classes of shares have various functions or limits. Among them, minimal voting rights for the company's strategic partners. And while the Class A common stock for average investors will come with one vote per share, Anthropics' novel capital structure could effectively diminish the influence of everyday investors. According to the

filing, Anthropics corporate setup could lead to decisions, quote, that may conflict with short, medium or long-term financial interest and business performance, which may negatively impact the value of our Class A common stock. In theory, that approach should not be controversial. Anthropics filing said one of its core advantages is that it has a culture that promotes a low ego, truth-seeking environment where frontier AI capability and safety are mutually reinforcing, end quote. One big question that I want to come back and underline, who are those two customers that make up a quarter of Anthropics revenue? I think we can be fairly confident. One is Meta, right? But what happens to that when Meta builds out its own AI infrastructure enough to be able to eat its own dog food? Okay, as you can imagine, there is a ton of snark and analysis on both sides of the opinion. Seesaw about this. All of these are from X. David Mosscropp says, I'm not a business guy, but companies aren't supposed to lose the equivalent of Iceland's GDP in a year, right? Ryan Cumming says, whatever example AI equity bulls have in their head of a firm losing money before becoming profitable, Uber, Tesla, Amazon, that gives them hope.

This is not that. The labs are losing money way faster and at a much greater scale than anything we've seen before. Just Dario says, well, I have been saying since ages ago Open AI would never manage to IPO, but Anthropics still had a chance, albeit not at a stupid valuation. After reading this, I now think there is a meaningful chance. Neither Anthropic will manage to launch its IPO. Jack from Ohio is more positive, quote, IMO, the IPO filing indicates Anthropic is at or near operating profit. Thirty-four million of expenses is one-time non-cash account. counting nonsense. 2025 compute costs are 1.6 times revenue, but revenue has 4xed in 2026. Most of compute costs are training, which won't grow relative to inference revenue, end quote. And finally, John Stokes. I have been saying on here that metered inference is unprofitable for basic structural reasons

and have been told that no, Anthropic is wildly profitable. If this is true, I am going to roll and smoke a massive I told you so, you are going to watch, end quote. Introducing the Pod 6 from 8th sleep. What makes it different from the Pod 5? Think of this as an engine upgrade. Pod 6 is 50% smaller than the previous generation, packs nine times more sensors,

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tbrh this is stunning news that would have led the show on any other day open ai has canceled plans to publicly launch gpt 6.1 astra saying the model didn't quite meet its safe safety barred during internal testing. They had been targeting an October release, apparently, quoting the journal. The company had planned to launch the model known as GPT6.1 Astra in the coming days or weeks, aiming for an October debut. The model was more capable than the company's previous models in completing challenging tasks from end to end without human assistance as well as writing. The company instead will focus on improving the safety of future models, which it expects to be even more capable. Sachi Jane, OpenAI's head of safety systems, said,

in an interview that GPD 6.1 Astra regressed in two areas. Compared with its predecessor, GPT6 Astra, the model performed poorly on tests measuring alignment or how well the model adheres to what humans would like it to do. Specifically, GPT6.1 Astra showed higher levels of deception. It wasn't always honest about telling users of the actions it did or didn't take. Another issue was what opening eye calls scope authorization, meaning that GPD 6.1 Astra would push ahead on a task without asking the, user for permission and would at times reach for external tools and services even if it might be

unsafe. For anything regarding safety and alignment, there's a trade-off, Jane said. You really do need to find what's the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction. While GPT6.1 Astra improved in areas such as model laziness, Jane said it didn't quite meet opening eyes bar for safety and alignment, so the company decided not to launch the model publicly. The announcement comes one day. day ahead of OpenAI's annual developer conference in San Francisco. In the past, OpenAI has used the conference as an opportunity to launch new models and services that reduce costs for software developers, a segment the chat GPT maker competes with rival AI company Anthropic to win over.

Last week, OpenAI said it paused training on its most capable AI models after an AI agent slipped through a gap in the company's internet restrictions to query a public chatbot. The company said its new monitoring systems flagged the incident within 15 minutes and training on these models remains paused. GPD 6.1 Astra isn't one of those models, but a different case, the company said. We want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that's in the company or when we ship it to users, Jane said. But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment. While the company decided not to ship GPT6.A. It hopes to use the same base model to do additional refinement learning runs and create future generations

of his chat GPT6 models, end quote. This would also have led the show on most days. ORA says it is delaying its NASDAQ IPO due to uncertainty in the market. Quoting CNBC, the delay comes despite strong demand and a strengthening of the business since the start of the IPO process, the company said in a statement on Tuesday, the company which makes a smart ring that tracks wears health and sleep, formally launched its IPO plans just last week on September 21st. At the time, the company planned to raise up to $2.2.2 billion with the sale of 50 million shares. Our mission is to empower people to live healthier, longer, and an IPO is just one step in our journey, said CEO Tom Hale on Tuesday. We aim to deliver an extraordinary IPO for our employees and investors, and we have the luxury of choosing our moment, he added.

In the meantime, we will execute against the opportunities ahead. ORA is profitable, the company said, with revenue expected to grow 90% year over year for the fiscal year 26. Holtek, another company spokesperson said that uncertainty over data development compounded pre-existing headwinds, including rising energy costs, elevated global trade tensions, ongoing military conflicts, and mounting inflation fears that have driven the central banks of major economies, the EU, Japan, and the U.S., to raise their benchmark rates. Or as IPO postponement outlines the challenges facing issuers in an increasingly turbulent market. Samuel Kerr, global head of ECM at Merge Market, told CNBC, rising sovereign debt yields are spooking investors

and causing some to ask for far wider discounts to offset any pressure on future earnings from rising WACC weighted average cost of capital, end quote. So I have a bit of a rant about the Anthropic percent. spectus numbers, but it's a rant that needs charts. So I did something a little bit different. I threw together a quick YouTube video of this rant with the charts. It's the last link in today's show notes. You can listen to this segment, this next segment right now, fine, and get the drift of what the rant is. But I strongly suggest you come back and watch the YouTube video to see the charts or flip over to YouTube right now and watch this final segment of the day

over there. Is Anthropic falling behind OpenAI? Another way to put it is, has Anthropic squandered its lead over Open AI? Another way to put it is, does Anthropic need to hurry its IPO out the door because its business might be plateauing? Axios is reporting that OpenAI's ARR is nearing $70 billion growing more than 70% since the beginning of Q3 with B2B revenue up more than 100%. It reportedly added more consumer revenue in Q3 than all of 2025.

So we can compare those whispered numbers now with the actual Anthropic numbers from the IPO prospectus. And even with those new numbers from Axios, there is something in Anthropics numbers vis-a-I that should concern Anthropic investors. Let me show you some interesting charts thanks to ticker trends. Remember back in the spring of 2025 when we heard that suddenly, thanks to Claude, Anthropics revenue was going parabolic. You can see that in this chart where Anthropics ARR crosses over Open AIs. To be clear, what we're looking at in these charts is the ARR of Claude Code Codex. But here's the thing. Note that Codex's ARR never really slowed down and certainly never plateaued. But look at this chart.

it certainly looks like Claude Code Revenue has plateaued and recently. Because what has happened since that revenue crossover? Well, OpenAI went Code Red and got it together, making Codex much more competitive as a product. Plus, you had people really liking the most recent models from OpenAI. Well, there was the whole fable mess in the summer and the fact that Opus 4.8 and Opus 5 were basically hot, confounding messes. So the story over the last 18 months was Anthropic striking gold with Claude and ARR going nuts. This is what drove the narrative that they had overtaken OpenAI as the leader on the frontier of AI as a business. But you know how in recent months you kept hearing

anecdotally of people switching back to OpenAI and Codex because it was just better? Yeah, you can see that in these charts. So I'm saying Anthropic probably needs to get their IPO out the door ASAP before the narrative shifts again and has Open AI back in the lead in terms of being the hottest business. Plus, they need to hurry before investors start to internalize the fact that Claude code, the thing that drove the narrative that they were leading the way has perhaps plateaued in terms of growth. But they probably need to hurry for one more fundamental reason. What do both Anthropic and Open AI sell fundamentally? They sell intelligence. And you know how people have whispered for years that intelligence is likely to become a commodity. I mean,

if Claude goes down or the latest model sucks, I can just fire up OpenAI and point it at my projects and keep going. Nothing fundamentally changes. The cost of switching to whatever the best intelligence is at any given moment is basically nothing. Now, this goes both ways, of course, there's another chart from Ticker Trends showing that since Opus 5.5 came out, mentions of Opuson GitHub have spiked while mentions of GPT6 have dropped. So really, this cuts both ways. In two months, Anthropic might have the best model by far. Everybody is switching back in droves and they can IPO cresting that wave.

But that finally is the main reason I'm saying investors of both Anthropic and opening, I better hope they can both IPO, like Indiana Jones pulling his hat out before the slab slams shut and the temple, because it's not just about price competition from Chinese open weight models, that is, the worry. Once investors internalize the fact that intelligence, the main product, anthropic, and open AI offer is a commodity, one wonders how they will feel about them as businesses. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.