The $2 Trillion IPO Is Pricing Two Unsolved Problems as Solved

Analysts covering Anthropic's $2 trillion IPO have already priced the company's own safety warnings. The researchers' statements about existential risk are, in their words, "unlikely to derail" the offering, though they may force more explicit disclosures in the filing. Anthropic is the lab that built its name on being the careful one. Evan Hubinger, the company's alignment science lead, has put the odds of an existential event within ten years at more than 10 percent.

Neither company is acting responsibly. — Jacob Coxon

A former researcher has said the industry believes the technology could kill everyone by the end of the decade. ^[1] The company's own reporting makes the same point in a different register. In a 154-page threat intelligence report this week, Anthropic documented state actors using Claude to research an enhanced chikungunya virus, to build ballistic missile guidance, and to surveil millions of phones. ^[2] The company drew one conclusion from its own findings.

The actors designed the platform for autonomous lethal engagement. — Anthropic

It is working on the problem; its method for isolating dangerous knowledge remains preliminary and has not been applied to production models. ^[3] The other major lab has reached the same place from the opposite direction. OpenAI, which spent years resisting binding rules, is now asking Congress to mandate national safety requirements before the end of the year.

The prospect of AI-accelerated AI development demands more than voluntary commitments. — OpenAI

^[4] None of this is a secret to the people who would have to power the buildout. PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator, has filed a proposal to make unsupported AI data centers the first to lose power during shortages, requiring them to bring their own generation by March 2027 or accept curtailment.

The unprecedented addition of large loads, most notably data centers, has given rise to resource adequacy shortfalls — and associated real-time operational issues that Interim Resource Adequacy Service is intended to address — PJM Interconnection

^[5] The backlog is not a matter of months. Eaton counts 307 gigawatts of US data center demand waiting on the grid, roughly 15 years of work at last year's build rate. ^[6] In Texas, developers have requested 466,497 megawatts, more than five times the most power the state's grid has ever delivered. ^[7] S&P Global Energy now forecasts that energy availability, not chips or capital, may become the primary constraint on AI deployment. ^[8] The decision to price both problems as solved is not one IPO's gamble. Steve Eisman has pointed out that roughly 70 percent of AI revenue and up to 35 percent of cloud revenue across Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle rests on OpenAI and Anthropic succeeding, and Michael Burry has called the arrangement a "circular financing web." ^[9] The insiders stated the odds. The grid stated the ceiling. The market priced neither. That is not a mystery or an irony. It is a decision, and it is holding up trillions.