New York City Comptroller Mark Levine is urging Anthropic to delay a US IPO expected in November at a target valuation of over $2 trillion, Reuters reported on 15 October.
Key points
- Levine asked Anthropic to address safety, governance and the pace of AI development before its flotation.
- Reuters put the expected IPO’s target valuation at over $2 trillion; Crypto Briefing put it at about $2 trillion.
- Levine has projected that rapid AI adoption could cost New York City up to 135,000 jobs and nearly $9 billion in tax revenue over four years.
Levine presses Anthropic over its IPO timetable
Levine made the request in a letter to Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei. He urged the company to address concerns about safety, corporate governance and the speed of AI development before proceeding with the offering. His intervention comes from an office that manages New York City’s pension funds as well as overseeing its finances and public spending.
“Instead of proceeding headlong with its IPO, the company should focus its energies on addressing these unprecedented risks,” Levine wrote, according to Reuters. The request is directed at the timing of Anthropic’s proposed listing, rather than at a reported investment by the city or its pension funds.
Levine discussed his letter and his reasons for seeking a postponement in a CNBC interview on 15 October. The programme identified AI safety among the concerns he raised.
Anthropic’s research has identified potentially harmful capabilities in controlled tests of increasingly autonomous models, Reuters reported. The examples included sabotaging code, facilitating fraud and manipulating information.
Anthropic’s proposed listing and investor figures
Anthropic has filed confidentially for an offering that could take place as soon as mid-November 2026, Crypto Briefing reported. It put the company’s target valuation at about $2 trillion and said potential fundraising could exceed $100 billion. Reuters put the expected target valuation at over $2 trillion, citing media reports.
Crypto Briefing reported that a prospectus contains 80 pages of risk factors, among them the possibility that Anthropic’s models could threaten humanity. It said the document also describes potential model behaviour such as resisting shutdown or acting coercively. The publication reported that the prospectus outlines predicted losses of $42 billion for 2025.
The proposed listing follows a pre-IPO meeting at which Anthropic told prospective investors that third-quarter revenue had risen 45% from the preceding quarter. An AI Affairs report on the investor figures put third-quarter revenue at $16.8 billion.
OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT and is Anthropic’s closest rival, is expected to list in 2027. Anthropic’s prospective November flotation would therefore put its proposed offering ahead of the rival’s expected timetable.
Levine projects a New York City fiscal cost
Levine has warned that rapid AI adoption could cause New York City to lose up to 135,000 jobs, Crypto Briefing reported. His estimate also puts the potential loss of city tax revenue at nearly $9 billion over four years. Those figures concern possible economic effects on the city, alongside the company-specific safety and governance concerns in his letter to Amodei.
Levine’s May 2026 report recommended a rainy-day fund equal to 16% of annual tax revenue to cushion possible AI-related economic disruption.
