Anthropic’s IPO could make its founders worth up to $200 billion, and critics are watching where the money goes

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude models, is heading for the public markets. If projected valuations hold, its seven cofounders could collectively sit on roughly $150 billion to $200 billion in equity.

That kind of money buys a lot of things. According to a sharply critical piece published by ZeroHedge, one of those things could be political influence for the Effective Altruism (EA) movement, the philanthropic network that has long orbited the company.

What the filing shows

Anthropic submitted its S-1 registration statement to the SEC on October 26, 2026. The company plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ‘ANT’.

The timeline is brisk. Marketing to investors is set to begin the week of November 9, with trading expected by the week of November 16, 2026.

Market projections put Anthropic’s value somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. The offering could raise as much as $100 billion, which would place it among the largest IPOs on record.

The filing itself leaves some blanks. It does not disclose a price range or a final share count, so every valuation figure floating around remains a projection rather than a fixed number.

The revenue line is the eye-catcher. Anthropic brought in $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, a 1,300% jump from the prior year.

Most of that landed late. The second quarter alone produced $11.6 billion, and Q2 also marked the company’s first reported operating profit.

Then there is the loss column. Anthropic posted a net loss of $80.7 billion, driven largely by non-cash accounting adjustments tied to its rising valuation.

Who owns what

The seven cofounders are Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Tom Brown, Christopher Olah, Jared Kaplan, Jack Clark, and Sam McCandlish. Together they hold approximately 10% of the company.

Split seven ways, that works out to individual stakes of around 1.4% to 1.5%. Each founder holds an estimated 231 million to 244 million shares.

At the upper end of projected valuations, each stake could be worth approximately $20 billion to $30 billion.

Control is not up for grabs, either. The founders hold a special Class F share that gives them 50.1% voting power on key company matters.

The founders have also voluntarily pledged 80% of their shareholdings to philanthropic causes. The catch is that the pledge is revocable, so it functions as a stated intention rather than a binding legal commitment.

The Effective Altruism question

This is where the ZeroHedge critique comes in. The piece argues that the IPO will dramatically expand the liquid resources available to the EA-linked network surrounding Anthropic.

Its concern is less about the founders getting rich and more about what that wealth could fund. The article contends the money could back people and groups seeking to push society toward the movement’s ideals, a framing that is plainly opinion rather than reporting.

The filing itself acknowledges the founders’ connection to Effective Altruism.

A safety company with a very large shopping list

The prospectus outlines long-term commitments to compute and infrastructure investments exceeding $500 billion.

The filing also includes extensive risk disclosures, including potential existential risks from AI development. Few S-1s warn investors that the core product could pose civilization-level dangers.

What this means

For investors, the listing is a referendum on how much the public markets will pay for frontier AI. A company with $16.3 billion in half-year revenue, a fresh operating profit, and an $80.7 billion paper loss is not a simple spreadsheet.

The $500 billion-plus infrastructure commitment matters just as much as the revenue growth.

Governance is the other pressure point. The Class F structure means public shareholders cannot easily override founder decisions.

The revocable nature of the 80% pledge adds another variable. Observers will be able to track whether those commitments convert into actual giving, and to which organizations, as the founders’ holdings become tradable.

The near-term markers are clear enough. Watch for the price range and share count when marketing begins the week of November 9, since those figures will determine whether the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion projections and the up to $100 billion raise materialize.