Article · AI translation
IT Home reported on October 31 that Anthropic recently filed IPO prospectus documents and could become the largest IPO in history.
According to a Bloomberg report today, the prospectus documents show that Anthropic plans to take on nearly $900 billion in debt through future spending on servers, buildings, electricity and other areas (IT Home note: approximately 6 trillion yuan at current exchange rates), far exceeding the current liabilities reported on its balance sheet.
According to documents Anthropic submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the size and health of its balance sheet show that the company currently has $117.5 billion in liabilities (approximately 783.674 billion yuan at current exchange rates) and $112 billion in cash (approximately 746.991 billion yuan at current exchange rates).
However, the fine print in Anthropic's financial statements shows that its planned spending includes off-balance-sheet obligations—financial commitments or potential liabilities borne by a company that are not directly reflected on its balance sheet—such as future lease contracts and purchase agreements for data centers, electricity and graphics processing units (GPUs).
The report noted that Anthropic's peers, including Alphabet and Meta, have also accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars in future debt as they develop AI. These expenditures have not yet been recognized on the companies' balance sheets, a practice that has raised concerns on Wall Street: shares of Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft have all taken a hit this week, partly because investors are wary of excessive AI spending.
Anthropic declined to comment on the scale of its capital commitments. According to its IPO filing, Anthropic plans to pay for these investment liabilities by increasing revenue and raising funds.