According to Fortune, Anthropic has tapped law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to explore an initial public offering. The AI company, frequently seen as an enterprise favorite, is currently valued at a staggering $183 billion. It’s on track to hit an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $10 billion by the end of 2025 and has told investors that figure could balloon to $70 billion by 2028. Headcount has exploded from about 500 employees in late 2023 to roughly 2,300 today. Despite this growth, the company is not yet profitable and was pacing to burn through $2.8 billion more cash than it generated by the end of 2025. However, its own projections show it breaking even in 2028, which would be two years ahead of rival OpenAI.
The Anti-Burn Strategy in a Trillion-Dollar Furnace
Here’s the thing that really stands out. In an industry where rivals like OpenAI are signing infrastructure deals worth over a trillion dollars, Anthropic is positioning itself as the frugal genius. CEO Dario Amodei is openly sardonic about the spending race, calling rival announcements “frothy” and quipping that business should be about “bringing in cash, not setting cash on fire.” It’s a massive bet that superior model efficiency can beat brute financial force. Basically, they’re trying to outsmart everyone instead of outspending them. But let’s be real: “efficient” in AI still means burning billions before 2028. It’s all relative.
The Enterprise AI Battlefield
Anthropic’s laser focus on enterprise clients puts it right in the crosshairs of every major cloud provider and AI firm. Google, Microsoft (via OpenAI), Amazon, and a host of others are all fighting for the same corporate budgets. Their commitment to AI safety, which co-president Daniela Amodei says gives the company a distinct “umami” flavor that attracts a certain type of employee, is also a double-edged sword. It’s a selling point for cautious corporations but has made them a political target. Can a company known for caution and safety maintain its culture through a hyperscale IPO and the intense pressure of public markets? That’s the real test.
Hypergrowth Without Flying Apart
Maybe the most fascinating part is the internal view. Daniela Amodei admits she’s been “the most skeptical and scared” of their growth rate. That’s a stunningly honest admission from a leader of a $183 billion company. She credits their stability to the fact that all seven cofounders are still there, acting as cultural anchors. It’s a rare thing in tech. But look, going from 500 to 2,300 people in roughly a year is insane. That kind of scale changes everything—communication breaks down, processes crumble, culture dilutes. The fact that they haven’t “come apart at the seams” yet is surprising. The question is whether that can hold through the turbulence of an IPO and the march toward those sky-high 2028 revenue targets.
