New York City's comptroller, Mark Levine, has asked Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, to hold off on selling its shares to the public. In an Oct. 14 letter to chief executive Dario Amodei, Levine urged the company to pause its planned initial public offering, or IPO, its first sale of shares on the stock market, until it "fully and transparently addresses" the safety, governance and development-pace concerns it has raised. "Instead of proceeding headlong with its IPO, the company should focus its energies on addressing these unprecedented risks," he wrote.
Levine writes as investment adviser to, and a trustee of, the New York City pension funds, which he says hold more than $325 billion and form one of the largest public pension systems in the United States. The funds have a combined $7 million in Anthropic through private equity holdings, his office said, according to a news report. That is about two thousandths of one percent of the funds' assets.
His case rests largely on Anthropic's own words. He cites Amodei's Sept. 12 essay, which said: "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models." He also notes that, according to news reports, Anthropic's draft filing for the share sale warns that advanced AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity." And he calls the "morally binding" accord that Anthropic and five other companies recently signed with the White House "insufficient to meet the moment."
Levine asks Anthropic to spell out how it will put audits and controls in place, what they are meant to cover and on what timeline, and whether they answer Amodei's own call to slow down. He argues that preparing a public offering pulls resources and attention away from that work, and he asks for a written response.
The letter comes as Anthropic courts investors. According to news reports, the company told potential investors at a meeting earlier this week that its revenue reached $16.8 billion in the third quarter, up about 45% from the quarter before, and that it was profitable on what it called an adjusted basis. Levine's letter says the share sale could reportedly value Anthropic at about $2 trillion.
Levine's letter is a request, and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to a news report. It is not yet clear whether the company will change its timing, or whether other investors will press it in the same way.