>> Continued From the Previous Page <<
Rapid Growth, Massive Valuation, and a Shift in Safety Policy
In late May 2026, Anthropic closed a massive $65 billion Series H funding round, pushing its valuation to roughly $965 billion. At the same time, the company reported explosive revenue growth, with an annualized run rate of about $47 billion—up dramatically from roughly $9 billion just months earlier.
That growth, however, has come with significant operational strain. Analysts note that despite soaring revenue, profit margins remain extremely thin, hovering around 5 percent, due to the enormous cost of running large-scale AI systems like Claude.
The infrastructure burden is staggering. The company relies heavily on cloud and hardware partnerships, including large-scale compute commitments through Amazon Web Services and up to one million Google TPUs. In practical terms, most incoming revenue is quickly consumed by compute costs.
Then came a major turning point in February 2026.
Anthropic publicly abandoned its core “Responsible Scaling Policy,” a framework that previously required the company to pause development if AI systems advanced faster than its ability to ensure safety. The company announced the change in a public blog post and defended it as necessary for competitiveness in a rapidly accelerating industry.
The original policy, once described as a binding safeguard, was replaced with a more flexible system that can be revised as needed.
Critics say the move effectively removed a hard stop on development at the exact moment AI capabilities are accelerating most rapidly.
Amodei’s Warnings vs. Market Reality
The tension between warning and action has become the defining contradiction of Anthropic’s public narrative.
In January 2026, Dario Amodei published a lengthy essay titled The Adolescence of Technology, in which he wrote:
“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.”
He also warned that “we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023.”
Despite those concerns, the company he leads is now preparing to enter public markets at one of the highest valuations in tech history.
A Crowded Race to Wall Street
Anthropic is not moving alone. The broader AI sector is undergoing a wave of IPO positioning, with rivals racing to secure capital before market conditions shift.
Notably, Anthropic appears to have moved ahead of OpenAI in the IPO race, filing its confidential paperwork first. OpenAI is also reportedly preparing its own public filing, with expectations of a potential market debut later in 2026.
The competitive dynamic is striking. Amodei, who once left OpenAI over concerns about its pace and priorities, is now effectively competing with his former colleagues in a high-stakes race for public investment capital.
A Market Built on Ambition—and Risk
The financial backdrop is equally dramatic. Anthropic, OpenAI, and other major AI players remain unprofitable despite record-breaking revenue growth. Yet combined, their valuations are approaching several trillion dollars.
Supporters argue this reflects the scale of the opportunity in artificial intelligence. Skeptics see echoes of earlier speculative cycles, where expectations ran far ahead of sustainable economics.
As the IPO wave builds, one question increasingly follows the industry: whether companies built on warnings about existential risk can reconcile those warnings with the pressures of public markets, rapid growth, and investor expectations.
For now, the answer appears to be unfolding in real time on Wall Street’s doorstep.
