THE WASHINGTON POST: Anthropic IPO investors struggle to put a price on rogue AI risk

Investors considering Anthropic PBC’s planned mega-IPO are grappling with an unusual conundrum: How to value a company that some fear could help wipe out the human race.

Researchers posting on X about a 10 per cent chance or greater that AI would wipe out humanity sparked a discussion that Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s co-founder and chief executive officer, weighed in on. His essay outlined concerns that humans could lose control of AI systems, the tools could be misused for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and could create serious economic disruption if top researchers don’t slow development.

While observers scoffed at the idea that a company could be held liable for killing off the species - or even quantify it in an initial public offering disclosure - the risks to Anthropic and its rival OpenAI resemble those faced by companies handling hazardous materials or military hardware.

A precedent that could inform handling AI risks is the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, according to Slow Ventures partner Sam Lessin. The venture capitalist has proposed the US government should force AI labs to put up $US1 trillion ($1.44trn) in cash in escrow to pay for the future potential cleanup, similar to how regulators demanded after the crisis that banks should hold more capital to cover losses. Even that may not be enough, he said.

“The liabilities might be a $US2 trillion or $US4 trillion risk to society, even before you consider the mass-extinction they talk about, making the companies worth less than zero overall,” Lessin said in an email interview with Bloomberg News.

Still, some investors may be willing to buy Anthropic stock and overlook an undefined but potentially enormous cost based on the theory that someone else will pay the bill, Lessin said.

A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment.

Apocalyptic Debate

Anthropic’s plan to raise as much or more in its IPO as SpaceX did in its own record-breaking debut, even as the debate around AI safety turned apocalyptic, has drawn scepticism and mockery. Yet the issue doesn’t appear to have hurt SpaceX shares.

Trillionaire Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company pinned much of its aspirations on AI, and its Grok AI model competes with Anthropic and OpenAI’s respective offerings. The company’s IPO filings made no mention of existential threats from AI, instead flagging risks such as misinformation and “AI deception.” SpaceX shares are trading more than 20 per cent above the offering price of its $US86.2 billion IPO in June.

President Trump’s recent “morally binding” accord on AI safety with big tech leaders, including Amodei, calmed some investor anxiety around the broader issue, said Luke Lango, chief technology analyst at InvestorPlace.

“This administration has come out and expressed concern, but this is also an administration that puts emphasis on deregulation and is in this race with China,” said Kevin Moss, the managing director and portfolio manager of the Private Shares Fund, which invests in late-stage private growth companies.

AI clearly required a regulatory framework, but the safety discussion was unlikely to upset Anthropic’s IPO plans, Moss said.

So far, the pressure to mitigate safety risks rests primarily with AI companies themselves, and investors may even welcome a certain amount of spending to address it.

New safety mechanisms will increase Anthropic’s costs but could enhance customer trust in its products and help create a competitive moat if Chinese or open-source competition is unable to match the same standards, said Harrison Rolfes, Pitchbook’s senior research analyst for late-stage companies.

Though the company is expected to have insurance, coverage limits and disputes have historically left shareholders with a large bill in disasters. When BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in 2010, killing 11 people and causing the biggest offshore oil spill in US history, the company’s so-called captive insurance arrangement was limited to $US700 million. The cost climbed into the tens of billions of dollars.

The insurance industry has been providing coverage to AI companies through traditional contracts and creating new products where gaps existed, according to Joe Ziolkowski, founder and CEO of Relm Insurance, an insurer focused on emerging industries such as AI and space. Finding coverage remained a battle for AI businesses given the lack historical data and uncertainty as to how AI liability would present itself, he said.

As AI moves from just providing information to making decisions and interacting with other agents, the issue of who’s legally responsible when losses inevitably arise is becoming more pressing, Ziolkowski said.

With little direct precedent among legal judgments for AI agents going rogue, however, investors considering buying into Anthropic at a valuation of as much as $US2 trillion face what amounts to a binary choice – accept the risk that the company may be fully on the hook for some of the most stark AI scenarios, or don’t.

“You can have an idea when you are looking at public filings how much these companies are putting into compliance or insurance or self-insuring, but it is unlikely that investors are going to discount these IPOs for exposures they can’t quantify,” Ziolkowski said.

“It is a good time to raise capital before some of these things become objectively quantifiable.”

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