Anthropic lost more than $8 billion on its operations last year. Now the company, warning that AI could threaten humanity, wants Washington to take a bigger role in controlling the industry.
An $8 billion loss ought to put management on the spot. Anthropic would rather have Congress worrying about the end of the world.
The leaked IPO prospectus puts last year’s revenue at about $4.6 billion and its operating loss at $8.06 billion, according to Reuters, which reviewed the document. There's also a $42 billion net loss. Roughly $34 billion of that came from an accounting adjustment involving financing, not cash out the door. Put that adjustment aside. Anthropic still reported an operating loss almost twice its annual revenue.
The real question is what power Anthropic wants Congress to hand over. Federal officials could block the release of an AI model. Developers covered by the proposal would need independent evaluations, regular risk reports, and security programs, with fines tied to worldwide revenue. Anthropic has put considerable thought into what everybody else should have to do before selling a sufficiently powerful product.
Who pays for all that?
The developer does, of course. Small firms would initially be exempt, but Anthropic proposes thresholds of more than $500 million in AI revenue or more than $1 billion in research spending, plus a model-training threshold. Picture a rival finally getting enough business to compete. Now it needs an outside evaluator, people to prepare the reports, and money to meet the security requirements. Anthropic already has experience doing this work. A challenger has to catch up on that, too.
Congress could make catching Anthropic more expensive, using rules Anthropic helped write. That looks like a pretty good deal for Anthropic.
With an IPO ahead and those losses on the books, I suspect the doom talk helps shift the conversation to something more comfortable for management. Instead of explaining when the business will make money, Anthropic gets to explain why Washington needs its advice to save humanity. The proposed rules could help protect its position while it works on the profits.
We’ve already had reason to question how these warnings were presented. Remember Jacob Coxon? He left Anthropic, went public with his fears, and denied having outside help. An email obtained by Pirate Wires showed DEY. Ideas + Influence sought an interview with him on September 9, the day after his announcement. RedState covered that discrepancy last week.
Bret Baier had asked Coxon directly:
“Did you work with any third parties as far as this whistleblowing and coming out?”
“Not at all.”
DEY. was booking interviews for Coxon. The reporting doesn’t show Anthropic hired it. But lawmakers considering his warnings should know a PR firm was helping him get airtime when he gave that answer.
The questions about how Anthropic shapes its public narrative don't stop with Coxon. Then came Anthropic's September 23 research announcement. Claude had searched DNA data for 21 hours, using roughly 950 agents, and spotted an enzyme system with CRISPR-like features. Human scientists followed up in the company’s wet lab. They’re still working out its function, but Anthropic had enough confidence in the result to announce it publicly.
The company described the physical operation this way:
Our lab, located in the Bay Area, looks like a typical molecular biology lab. We do research that involves only the lower levels of the biosafety risk level (BSL-1 and BSL-2), and we do not handle pathogens that can infect humans. All of the lab work is performed by human scientists.
Nobody at Anthropic seems to have stopped building. While its executives warn Congress about existential risk, its scientists run experiments and file discoveries to show prospective investors. That's a fine case to make to Wall Street. Sell the shares on that.
But leave Congress out of it. Make rival developers spend more before they can sell, give officials authority to block their releases, and let an incumbent benefit plenty; no ownership required.
Congress should ask the same question any investor would: Why is the company reporting an $8 billion operating loss so eager to write the rules for its competition?