Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei has brushed aside skepticism about whether the artificial intelligence industry can deliver strong returns, even as some major customers signal they may tighten AI budgets.
Speaking Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech conference, Amodei addressed the company's decision to file confidentially for an initial public offering, a move that comes as private investors continue to clamor for a stake in the company.
IPO plans and capital needs
Multiple investors told TechCrunch that Anthropic's $65 billion fundraise at a $965 billion valuation, announced last week, was heavily oversubscribed. With that private demand still strong, the company is now taking the next step toward a public listing.
Amodei said the decision to go public is driven by capital requirements. "It's a really big upfront cost to train the models and to serve inference on them," she said. "My guess is that over time, the sort of core set of companies that are working to advance the frontier are just going to need access to capital, and I think the public market is very well suited to that."
Revenue growth and corporate spending concerns
Anthropic has been growing rapidly. The company said annualized revenue reached $47 billion in May, a sharp increase from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025.
But that trajectory faces a potential test. Companies like Uber have said that while AI can deliver returns, not all of their AI spending has been productive. That raises the possibility that corporations might start reining in those budgets, which could slow growth across the sector.
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Amodei is not concerned. She believes businesses are still in the early stages of figuring out how to use AI effectively.
"The use cases today, I expect will continue to be the primary driver of efficiency or creativity, whether that's coding, financial services, legal, [or] health care," she said. "But as the business community gets more familiar with the tools, we're all going to learn together. My hope is that over time it'll be more incorporated into the day-to-day of how humans do our work, and there will actually be a lot more value realized."
Data center strategy and xAI partnership
Amodei also explained why Anthropic, unlike rivals OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI, is not building its own data centers to meet growing compute needs.
"Anthropic's view has always been wanting to plan for the best outcome but not overextend ourselves such that we're buying more compute than we could productively use," she said. "It's really hard to predict that perfectly. We would much prefer to be on the side of having a little bit more demand for the product than we're able to serve than the inverse."
Last month, Anthropic surprised the AI industry by partnering with xAI for compute capacity. A deal later disclosed in SpaceX's S-1 filing will cost Anthropic $1.25 billion per month.
The company's approach suggests it is trying to balance growth with financial discipline as it prepares to enter the public markets.