Anthropic IPO won't be slowed by safety uproar

• There have been social media suggestions that Anthropic might want to wait, due to new product liability and regulation questions.
• Yet the Claude maker might actually view the past 48 hours as elevating the case for its IPO rather than dampening it — arguing that safety is improved via the transparency of being a public company.
• OpenAI, meanwhile, was leaning toward a 2027 listing and still seems to be doing so.

Zoom in: Neither Anthropic's business nor the investor FOMO are different this week than last.

• Yes, Anthropic has pledged to have third-party evaluation of its models, and suggested some pacing that might slow new model releases. But so did its top rival, and there's still an insane amount of untapped revenue tied to models already in market.
• It's also not like Anthropic would be the first or only listed frontier lab, as Alphabet and SpaceX shares continue to trade.
• There's also a cynical argument that "pacing" could reduce Anthropic's compute spend, thus improving its financials. Some also have accused the company of pursuing a policy of regulatory capture — and if you buy that argument, you'll probably also buy Anthropic stock.
• Finally, it still needs the money. It could delay and raise more via private markets, but no frontier lab can just sit on the capital markets sidelines.

Driving the news: Anthropic has decided to list on the Nasdaq, per Business Insider.

Yes, but: One thing that could change Anthropic's course would be if there's a major unwinding of the AI trade.

• Stocks did open lower this morning, but not drastically so. And it's tough to parse how much pullback is caused by AI tumult versus oil prices and interest rates.

The bottom line: Want to own a piece of Claude while also making a bet on the future of humanity? You'll be able to. Soon.