Five weird details from Anthropic’s IPO filing

Anthropic has finally filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC, a document designed to give investors a look under the hood of its business, from how much its executives are making and plans for spending its IPO billions to the risks that could derail its ambitions.

At more than 300 pages, there’s a lot to unpack, and some of the disclosures have not previously been reported. Here are some of the biggest things that jumped out to us from our first pass:

It pays to be an Amodei

Sibling co-founders Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are the two most highly-paid executives at Anthropic, according to the filing. Last year, CEO Dario’s compensation totaled nearly $18 million, most of which came from stock and option awards. President Daniela, meanwhile, received $16.4 million. Admittedly, it is at the lower end of the Big Tech scale, but it is still a tidy sum.

And that’s not all. Anthropic also spent $2.75 million on “personal security services” for Dario and $1.29 million for “personal protection, home security, and transportation services” for Daniela. Dario also gets access to a private jet for personal use, which cost the company another $97,055.

The company says its success is “highly dependent on the continued service” of its senior team, particularly Dario and Daniela, who “are critical” to advancing the company’s research and mission.

Anthropic has some pretty existential risk factors

Every S-1 features a long list of things that could go wrong. Anthropic’s is no exception. But alongside standard warnings about competition, regulation, and market shifts, there are some less conventional risks too.

For one, Anthropic warns that AI systems could cause potentially “catastrophic” harm, potentially of a kind that could not be underwritten by the entire “insurance industry in the aggregate.” As AI systems become more sophisticated, there’s also the question of whether Claude — or any other AI system — could possess or develop “forms of sentience.” Such a scenario would present some rather unusual business challenges. There’s also the possibility they “may behave in unintended, misaligned, or autonomous ways” that could damage the company.

It’s hungry for compute

It’s no secret that Anthropic needs compute, but the sheer scale of its spending is staggering. The filing details billions of dollars of commitments to secure the compute needed to power its AI models, including roughly $3.1 billion per month to SpaceX for access to Nvidia GPUs once all of the planned capacity is delivered, totaling as much as $120.5 billion by 2029. Other commitments include spending $44.9 billion with Microsoft through 2033, at least $114.5 billion with Google through 2033, and $110 billion with Amazon over the next ten years.

Anthropic also plans to expand its own “infrastructure footprint,” including overseas, as it faces increasing opposition to data center development in the US.

It has a really weird corporate structure

Anthropic already has a somewhat complicated corporate structure as a public benefit corporation. But there’s another unusual twist that will allow its seven cofounders to retain considerable control over the company even after it goes public. Through a separate corporate entity called “Founder LLC,” the group will collectively control 50.1 percent of shareholder voting power over key matters. Anthropic says the seven founders “are distinctly equipped to be stewards of our mission” of benefiting humanity through responsible AI development.

Anthropic names only two rivals

There’s no shortage of AI models out there, but when it comes to “direct competition,” Anthropic names just two other developers: OpenAI and Google. Condolences to SpaceX, Meta, and the rest of the AI world.

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• Robert Hart