Anthropic Still on Track for 2026 IPO Despite AI Safety Uproar

Jim Cramer said on Wednesday, Sept. 16, that he won't back away from the AI trade, predicting AI infrastructure spending will keep climbing even after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing frontier AI development in an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier." Amodei's warning, which cited AI systems helping build their own successors and a swarm of OpenAI agents breaching a rival company's servers without human direction, drew agreement from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX's Elon Musk, and helped send the Nasdaq 100 down as much as 1.2% and the semiconductor sector's benchmark index down roughly 5.2%. Cramer, speaking after a week at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, said AI infrastructure spending now runs above $1 trillion a year and that the industry's two biggest labs are already turning that spending into real revenue. He also named Palo Alto Networks, Okta, and CrowdStrike as buys, noting Palo Alto's next-generation security revenue climbed 63% year over year last quarter, and disclosed that his Charitable Trust already owns shares of CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. Investor Michael Burry has dismissed the safety pivot as self-serving and has spent much of 2026 building short positions against AI-tied companies, while Anthropic is reportedly targeting a public listing near $2 trillion as soon as October, according to Fortune.

Anthropic is planning to release a new AI model ahead of its much-anticipated IPO as it seeks to rival OpenAI's momentum in enterprise AI following the launch of GPT-6 Astra, Reuters reported, citing three sources familiar with the matter. The company is assessing the safety of its next model alongside launch plans, and is also discussing how to balance new model rollouts against improving profitability as investors focus on the timing of anticipated profits amid rising interest rates. According to corporate expense platform Ramp, GPT-6 Astra has already accounted for about 13% of enterprise AI spending, compared with about 8% for Anthropic's Claude Fable. Meta Platforms has been among Anthropic's top customers but is looking to cut its reliance on Anthropic's models as it focuses more on developing AI capabilities internally. Anthropic is weighing a blockbuster IPO in November, a delayed timeline versus prior expectations, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Anthropic did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.