Anthropic CEO warns of huge uncertainty days before record IPO

A candid warning before the listing

According to The Decoder, the listing is scheduled for 19 November and could be the largest initial public offering in history.

In a conversation with JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon, Amodei described buying compute, meaning the computing power used to train and run AI models, as the deepest business dilemma the company faces.

Why compute spending is a gamble

Amodei explained that AI technology is advancing so quickly that nobody knows how the progress will turn into economic value. Computing capacity, however, must be purchased one to two years in advance, long before revenue figures show whether the investment was justified.

If Anthropic buys too little capacity, it will lack the resources for customers and new technologies, and revenue suffers. Buying too much carries the opposite risk. Amodei said a company can financially overextend itself.

The scale of the commitments

According to Bloomberg figures cited by The Decoder, Anthropic has committed nearly $901 billion, with most of it going towards computing power and chips. Around $71 billion of that is due by September 2027. Bloomberg notes that the total exceeds the market value of roughly two-thirds of the companies in the S&P 500 index.

Amodei had already raised similar concerns in February 2026. He warned then that he could spend $1 trillion on compute from the end of 2027 and go bankrupt if revenue fell short, saying that a one-year error could sink the company. He also suggested some competitors had not fully understood the risks they were taking.

How Anthropic plans to cushion the risk

Amodei named two buffers against the uncertainty: gross margins and cash reserves. He said Anthropic's margins are quite good compared with other players, and that the company holds a large cash balance while seeking to raise more.

The company also avoids buying much capacity in advance. Instead it can turn to the spot market, where capacity is hired as needed, if demand grows faster than expected. Amodei likened the approach to insurance: it protects the company if results disappoint while leaving room to invest more when business is strong. He said the promise of a larger cash cushion was the biggest reason for going public, because it widens the margin between owning too little compute and too much.

Revenue growth and the road ahead

The financial backdrop is strong, at least for now. Bloomberg attributes the growth partly to the rising popularity of AI products, including the company's coding models.

Amodei appeared relaxed about the timing of the listing, saying he was not tied to a particular month or market conditions. He noted that Anthropic grew from nothing to its current size in six years. The advice that resonated most before the IPO, he said, was never to let the company be worth a dollar more than it is really worth, an idea he compared to an internal principle of under-promising and over-delivering.

In the same conversation, he expressed hope that AI could help cure cancer and Alzheimer's disease within five to 15 years, while admitting he does not know exactly when. It was a reminder, days before a record listing, that even Anthropic's own outlook rests on uncertain ground.