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The over 300-page S-1 document submitted earlier this week by Anthropic contains a wealth of information. This is by far the most comprehensive public explanation to date regarding how a pure AI laboratory makes money.

After the prospectus was made public on Monday, my American colleagues and I went through it page by page, organizing information ranging from revenue and risks to competitors and computing power costs.

This document also reveals that CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders each hold more than 200 million shares. If Anthropic achieves its anticipated valuation of over one trillion dollars, the value of these shares could reach several billion dollars.

However, despite the disclosure of many details, there are still several major issues that remain unanswered.

Income

According to Anthropic, in the first half of 2026, its revenue cost was 2.38 billion US dollars, while it achieved revenue of 16.29 billion US dollars during the same period, which means a gross margin of 85%.

Leverage Shares Senior Research Analyst Violeta Todorova told CNBC that Anthropic's revenue in the first half of the year increased significantly compared to the $1.16 billion in the first half of 2025, and questioned whether this could "meet expectations."

She said, "As the demand for computing power increases, it is currently unclear how much cost is required for each additional dollar of revenue."

However, the explosive revenue growth of Anthropic slowed down in the third quarter. Its revenue in the second quarter increased by about 144% compared to the first quarter, and then the growth rate in the third quarter was approximately 47%.

Morningstar Chief Stock Strategist Michael Field stated: "What the prospectus doesn't tell us is what the management's expectations are for the continuous slowdown in growth rates."

Computing power

The document states that "the vast majority of revenue costs" are related to computing power and infrastructure costs. It also indicates that operating profit margins and adjusted operating profit margins are expected to "fluctuate over time, especially during periods when a large amount of additional computing power is delivered to us and related expenses are incurred."

Futurum Group The person in charge of artificial intelligence, Nick Patience, told CNBC: "Investors can see that the proportion of computing power costs in revenue is declining, but they cannot see how much of the forward-looking commitments is used for training the next generation of models and how much is used to serve customers. This distinction will determine future profit margins."

He added that regarding the issues of AI and the situation where demand in the field of hyperscale cloud service providers exceeds supply, there are still two questions: whether the cost of computing power can decrease more rapidly than promised, and whether Anthropic can obtain sufficient production capacity to serve customers.

Regarding AI and the situation where the demand in the ultra-large-scale cloud service industry exceeds supply, the prospectus states that the company previously sought from "cloud service providers" a level of computing power that "exceeded what these partners were willing to provide."

Subsequently, the document states: "Throughout our history, we have been in an environment where computing power has been limited, and the demand for computing power has exceeded what we are able to supply."

Pricing and Control Rights

The structure of Anthropic as a public welfare company ( public benefit corporation ) has also raised questions. Seven co-founders, including the CEO Dario Amodei, hold special voting rights through a class of F shares and collectively possess 50.1% of the total voting rights on matters submitted for shareholder voting.

Anthropic describes its capital and corporate governance structure in the document as 'having no direct precedents among listed companies'.

The Field of Morningstar said, "We now also know that the management plans to issue several different types of shares. However, what we don't know is whether investors will accept this lack of control, or whether this will affect the stock price. We will only find out once the shares start trading."

The last question is: What exactly is the valuation of IPO that Anthropic is targeting? The AI laboratory is currently keeping a tight lid on this information, only stating that the valuation will be "determined by negotiations between us, the selling shareholders, and the underwriting representatives."

Considering that analysts' valuation ranges are between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, this will be a huge market event. If it ends up closer to the upper end of the range, it could boost the morale of the AI sector, which has been cooling down in recent weeks; if it approaches the lower end, the situation could turn quite bad.

News Editor

Apple announced on Wednesday the launch of its first laptop with a touchscreen, named MacBook Pro with ProLED XDR Display.

SK After Hynix announced record quarterly profits that significantly exceeded expectations, as well as a plan to distribute over $25 billion in dividends and conduct share repurchases, its stock price rose.

NVIDIA and Supermicro Semiconductor stated that they will jointly invest $4 billion in Meta. Previously, this social media giant announced plans to raise $95 billion to support its investments in AI infrastructure.

Microsoft stated on Monday that it is offering buyout options to a large number of its employees in an effort to find a balance between the costly construction of AI infrastructure and capital efficiency.

Elon Musk stated on Sunday that SpaceX has completed a $40 billion debt financing to purchase the graphics processors ( GPU ) that power the AI system.

One more thing to add.

S-1 disclosed a large amount of company information, but one number is particularly noteworthy. This AI laboratory has more cash on hand than almost all companies in the United States. As my colleague Leslie Picker wrote, no company has ever had such a huge amount of cash when going public in history.