Anthropic struggling with Chinese competition, its own safety obsession

The maker of Claude faces headwinds as it rushes to go public

Anthropic, riding a wave of goodwill after resisting demands from the US Defense Department to soften model safeguards, is reportedly planning to go public as soon as Q4 2026.

That may not be soon enough to avoid the undertow of financial pressure, competition from China, and the challenge of delivering AI models that provide some measure of safety without sacrificing too much utility.

The company’s financial picture isn’t pretty. In a legal filing [PDF] earlier this month, CFO Krishna Rao revealed that the company, which has raised $30 billion, has only managed to make $5 billion while spending $10 billion on inference and training alone.