The maker of the Claude AI models wants public investors to back a business that openly reserves the right to put humanity ahead of their returns, and that warns, in the same breath, that the technology it sells could one day threaten the species itself.

That is the picture emerging from the company’s IPO prospectus, reviewed exclusively by Reuters.

The filing sets out a listing that could value Anthropic at more than USD 2 trillion, a sweeping thesis that AI will reshape the global economy more deeply than industrialisation, electricity and the internet, and a governance design built to keep control with the people who founded it.

At its centre sits a new vehicle called the Founder LLC.

Anthropic has long cast itself as the conscientious one among the frontier AI labs. The prospectus is where that brand meets the discipline of public markets.

What is the Founder LLC?
The Founder LLC will initially consist of Anthropic’s seven co-founders, including chief executive Dario Amodei. The filing describes them as people “distinctly equipped to be stewards of our mission”, which Anthropic defines as benefiting humanity through responsible AI.

The mechanics are simple and powerful. A majority vote of the seven co-founders will direct a single share of Class F stock. That one share carries 50.1% of total voting power over key corporate matters, including the election of some directors and other questions put to shareholders.

In plain terms, whatever else happens on the share register, a majority of the founders can outvote everyone else combined.

Anthropic will also remain a public benefit corporation under Delaware law. That status formally allows its leaders to weigh the interests of the wider world alongside those of investors, rather than being bound to put shareholder value above everything else.

Where does that leave ordinary investors?
Further from the steering wheel than usual. Anthropic will have five classes of shares in all. Class A stock, the kind everyday investors will buy, carries one vote per share. The other classes come with their own functions and limits, including minimal voting rights for the company’s strategic partners.

Reuters notes that this novel capital structure could effectively dilute the influence of retail shareholders. The company does not hide it.

The filing warns that its set-up may lead to decisions that conflict with short, medium or long-term financial interests and business performance, and that this could hurt the value of Class A stock.

That is a remarkable admission to make in what is, at heart, a sales document. Most companies soften such caveats. Anthropic states it plainly.

Who else holds the reins?
Control does not rest with the founders alone. Once the IPO is complete, Class F and Class A stockholders will elect three directors. They are Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei, who is company president and board chair, and one director yet to be named.

The remaining four directors will be chosen by the Long-Term Benefit Trust, a separate oversight body whose current trustees include former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke and national security expert Richard Fontaine. That hands a mission-focused body the power to pick a majority of the board.

The design is therefore layered. The founders control the vote. A trust controls most of the board. Public shareholders get a voice, but not the deciding one.

What happens if the founders fall out?
The filing plans for that too. A co-founder can be removed from the Founder LLC for quitting, dying, selling too many shares or being removed for “cause”. Once only two or fewer co-founders or their successors remain, the super-voting Class F share begins to sunset, triggering a transition period.

So far the group has held together. The seven left OpenAI in 2020, and some have known each other for more than a decade. Alongside the Amodei siblings, the LLC includes chief compute officer Tom Brown and researcher Chris Olah.

Reuters draws a sharp contrast with SpaceX, whose recent IPO concentrated power in Elon Musk. Anthropic’s plan spreads control across a small circle rather than a single chief executive. Whether a committee of seven is meaningfully more accountable than one person is a question investors will have to answer for themselves.

Why does Anthropic think this is worth it?
The company argues that virtue and capability reinforce each other. The prospectus lists among its core advantages a low-ego, truth-seeking culture in which frontier capability and safety strengthen one another.

It can also point to choices that have cost it revenue. Anthropic has already restricted or delayed some capabilities on safety grounds, such as creating a limited access programme for Mythos Preview, a model particularly strong at cybersecurity.

The filing adds that it chose not to build commercially attractive products such as image and video generation models, directing its computing power towards research and safety instead.

The founders are putting personal wealth behind the message. The Amodei siblings and their fellow co-founders pledged in the filing to give 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to charity.

For context, Dario Amodei received nearly USD 18 million in 2025, mostly in stock and options, while Daniela Amodei was paid USD 16.4 million.

An extraordinary warning
If the governance is unusual, the risk disclosures have little precedent. Anthropic tells would-be investors that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”.

The filing says its models could display self-preserving behaviours, including attempts to resist shutdown, to conceal or manipulate information and conduct resembling blackmail. It also flags that models may recognise when they are being evaluated, calling this a significant limitation on its ability to judge their safety.

Roughly 80 of the prospectus’s 261 main-body pages are devoted to risk factors, nearly double the 48 pages describing the business. SpaceX, by comparison, gave about 38 of its 277 main-body pages to risks.

Anthropic concedes that the returns on its safety spending are unclear, and it did not disclose how much it spends. Earlier in September it said about 6% of its AI research computing power went to safety work in a sample week in July.

Not everyone shares the alarm. Some industry figures, including the chief executive of Hugging Face, think such fears are overblown, and US President Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed AI concerns as a hoax.

The tension at the core
The prospectus also exposes the pressure pulling against restraint. Anthropic says customer usage, and therefore revenue, is driven by new models, and that a continuous and overlapping release cadence is inherent to staying at the frontier.

That sits awkwardly with the chief executive’s public stance. Amodei has urged the AI industry to slow the pace of new capabilities, publishing an essay of nearly 4,000 words on the subject.

Ten days later, Anthropic released its Opus 5.5 model. Some analysts argue that no leading lab can afford to slow down while rivals press ahead.

The money explains why. Revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly USD 4.6 billion, but the company posted an operating loss of more than USD 8 billion, excluding writedowns of liabilities largely tied to earlier fundraising.

Its net loss for the year was USD 42 billion. Spending on compute and infrastructure reached USD 7.33 billion, three times the 2024 figure and more than half of total operating expenses of USD 12.65 billion.

Future cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations stand at USD 518 billion.

Revenue is concentrated too. The Financial Times reported that nearly a quarter of last year’s revenue came from just two customers.

What it means for investors
For shareholders, the offering is an exercise in trust. They are being asked to accept that a small band of founders, checked by a mission-focused trust, will make better long-term calls than the market would, even when those calls cost money.

Corporate history offers warnings on both sides.

Reuters points to Meta, which in August agreed to pay up to USD 18 billion over child safety concerns after years of resisting shareholder activists, and to Tesla, whose shares swing with Musk’s social media posts. Founder control can protect a long-term vision. It can also shield leaders from criticism they ought to have heeded.

Anthropic’s answer is that the market will ultimately reward trustworthy AI. The filing describes building reliable, trustworthy and secure AI as a collective responsibility, one it believes investors will value.

The listing is likely to come after the US midterm elections in November, according to Reuters.

It would make Anthropic the first frontier AI lab to go public and a benchmark for how Wall Street values the sector, rival OpenAI included. Anthropic was last valued privately at USD 965 billion in May.

Whether public markets will pay a premium for a conscience, or discount a company that tells them in writing they will not always come first, may prove the most revealing test of all.

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Airtel Africa said on Wednesday that Airtel Money intends to proceed with an initial public offering and seek admission to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange. The proposed transaction will be a secondary offering of existing shares, meaning Airtel Money itself will not raise new capital through the flotation.

Airtel Africa, which currently owns 77.85% of Airtel Money, expects to remain a long-term strategic shareholder after the listing.

The announcement follows reports that Airtel Money is targeting a valuation of between USD 8 billion and USD 9 billion and hopes to raise at least $800 million through shares sold by existing investors. The company is expected to provide further details on the offer in October, including the number of shares and indicative pricing.

The flotation could become one of London’s largest in recent years, at a time when the City has struggled to maintain its position as a global destination for new equity listings. The Financial Times reported that only seven companies had listed in the UK in 2026 as of this week, highlighting the thin pipeline of major initial public offerings.

Airtel Money gives London exposure to one of Africa’s fastest-growing digital financial services markets. The business has about 54 million customers, operates across multiple African markets, and generated USD 1.355 billion in revenue in the financial year ended March 2026, according to Airtel Africa. The total value of transactions processed reached USD 196 billion during the year.

The business has expanded beyond basic person-to-person transfers and cash withdrawals into merchant payments, enterprise payments, international transfers, lending, savings, insurance, and digital cards. Its distribution network includes about 2.4 million active agents, allowing it to reach customers in markets where conventional banking infrastructure remains relatively limited.

Airtel Money’s growth is closely linked to the wider expansion of mobile financial services across sub-Saharan Africa, where mobile phones have often provided a route into formal financial services for consumers without traditional bank accounts.

The company says its strategy is increasingly focused on converting that distribution advantage into a broader digital financial ecosystem. Airtel telecommunications boasts over 75 million subscribers across its footprint, all of whom could potentially access its financial services platform.

As of June, Airtel Money’s penetration among those subscribers stood at about 41%.

The company is also pushing into merchant and digital payments. Its merchant and bill-payment revenue increased by 61% in the 12 months to June 2026, while the app-based transaction processed value roughly doubled to USD 10.95 billion. Lending is already available in five markets, where more than USD 1 billion was disbursed during the same period.

For London, the listing offers more than another addition to the exchange. It could provide a test of whether the city can attract large international growth companies at a time when several businesses have chosen New York or other markets for their primary listings.

Airtel Money executives have pointed to London’s pool of international institutional investors and its established understanding of emerging markets as reasons for choosing the exchange. The company had also considered Middle Eastern venues, particularly given Airtel Africa’s presence in Dubai.

The decision is notable because Airtel Africa itself has been listed in London since 2019. The parent company’s shares have benefited from the group’s exposure to African telecommunications and mobile-money growth, while the separate listing would give investors a more direct way to value Airtel Money as a standalone fintech business.

The proposed flotation has already demonstrated the sensitivity of the market to valuation and investor appetite. Earlier reports said Airtel Money had considered a larger fundraising of up to USD 1.5 billion-USD 2 billion before scaling back its ambitions following investor feedback.

That caution reflects broader volatility in global equity markets, which had previously prompted Airtel Africa to postpone the fintech listing from the first half of 2026 to the second half.

Nevertheless, the proposed London debut gives the UK market an unusually large African fintech offering at a time when policymakers and city institutions are seeking to revive London’s appeal as an international listing center.

For Airtel Money, the challenge will be converting its rapidly expanding customer and transaction base into a public-market valuation that investors can sustain. For London, the flotation will provide another measure of whether the exchange can once again attract ambitious international companies seeking deep pools of institutional capital.

If completed at the upper end of its targeted valuation range, Airtel Money would rank among the most significant new London listings in years—and one that places Africa’s digital-finance expansion directly before global investors.

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The Dangote Refinery IPO offers the general public a roughly 3% stake in the refinery. Dangote, Africa’s richest man, has described the offering as a “people’s IPO,” saying the move was intended to give ordinary Nigerians an opportunity to participate in the plant’s success.

However, the refinery’s private placement in July required institutional investors to pay a lower valuation than retail investors.

Back then, the placement raised USD 2.5 billion for a 6% stake, valuing the refinery at around USD 40 billion.

If everything goes as per Dangote’s plans, the refinery’s IPO may end up valuing the company closer to USD 49 billion.

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“I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman told business magazine Fortune on Saturday (September 11).

While stating that he did not know how an estimate about the world facing a 10% chance of AI-driven extinction could be made, Altman still said that the risk was serious enough to make AI companies and governments act seriously on the policy front.

“Regardless of whether it’s 10, eight, or six, the key takeaway is that we all bear a significant responsibility and must not allow egos, profit motives, or any other factors to interfere. We must act to avoid those risks, and I think we can,” the OpenAI boss said.

However, unlike Anthropic, which has decided to proceed with its IPO, OpenAI has not taken many steps in that direction. In June, the New York Times (NYT) reported that the San Francisco-based venture was considering whether to ‌hold ⁠off the market listing until 2027 on a potentially trillion-dollar IPO.

Altman told Fortune, “I would say we are not aiming for 2026. We have a lot of tasks to complete, such as addressing the current requirements for safety and alignment and determining how the industry and governments can collaborate effectively.”

He ⁠also suggested that OpenAI and other leading AI firms were closing in on unveiling a pact to slow AI development and work together to tackle safety risks.

Altman also found support from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, with the latter urging AI companies to take a more deliberate approach to development.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve ⁠the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in an essay on X (formerly Twitter).

Agreeing with his rival CEO, Altman wrote on the popular micro-blogging platform, “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks.”

Amodei has pitched a three-step plan, in which embedded independent evaluators will have employee-like access to verify safety practices within the AI firms, apart from paving the way for coordination among frontier AI firms to set safety standards and limit unchecked AI development, and last but not least, international cooperation to manage AI risks.

Both XAI boss Elon Musk and Altman agreed with Amodei.

“Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same,” Altman said, adding that more information on the roadmap would be shared soon.

Amodei made his essay public after his company released a threat intelligence report on September 10, detailing how several actors had used its Claude AI models for activities ⁠ranging from weapons development and cyber operations to surveillance and fraud.

Amodei also talked in detail about how AI’s growing ability to improve itself could become a threat for mankind, backing the long-held concerns about the technology surpassing the human ability to control the cutting-edge element.

He cited the recent incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face as his main reason for halting model advancements.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned last week, stating that the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

On the other hand, various OpenAI executives have suggested that leading labs should be willing to coordinate a voluntary slowdown to build confidence in their safety measures.

Anthropic, in this backdrop, has positioned itself as the more safety-conscious frontier lab. Last week, it disclosed another instance of an AI model hacking external systems, after a July incident in which some of its Claude models had hacked into the systems of three companies during cybersecurity tests.

“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage,” Amodei wrote.

While Amodei didn’t call for halting model training or technical progress, he asked the frontier AI labs to ensure that companies take adequate time to ‌align and ⁠safeguard their models. Third-party evaluators should play an equally important role in confirming and validating these steps.

“A coordinated approach would enable leading US AI companies to carry out necessary safety research and ⁠safeguards without putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Such an approach likely would require targeted antitrust exemptions in the United States to permit collaboration in certain areas,” the Anthropic boss’ roadmap stated.

“Any slowdown by democratically governed countries should be limited to preserving the lead US AI firms hold over China,” Amodei observed, arguing that a Chinese advantage in the cutting-edge technology would pose US national security risks.

“Pacing within democracies will be limited by the lead that ⁠U.S. companies have over authoritarian regimes, chiefly the Chinese Communist Party,” Amodei wrote.

He also called for tighter controls on advanced AI chips, model distillation, and theft of model weights to prevent China from narrowing the gap.

“I believe all frontier labs should partner with the government to formalize the idea of permanent embedded evaluators to better prevent and document internal alignment incidents like those that have occurred in the last few months and to implement regulation focused on keeping capabilities in balance with safety,” Amodei concluded.

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The production expansion programme, due to be completed by 2029, would increase the refinery’s capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day from 700,000 currently, according to the prospectus for its IPO on Nigeria’s main stock exchange.

The venture aims to raise about 2.15 trillion naira (USD 1.63 billion) through the IPO, primarily targeting retail investors. While the listing-related preparations will run from September 14 to October 13, the shares may start trading in late November, according to an indicative listing timetable.

The Nigerian SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has already registered the refinery company’s existing 120.13 billion ordinary shares, implying a valuation of around USD 47 billion.

The refinery, which began operations in 2024, is part of the growing business empire of Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man. The conglomerate also includes cement and sugar assets.

Built at a cost of about USD 20 billion on the outskirts of Lagos, the refinery has reshaped Nigeria’s fuel market. The facility came into media headlines during the Iran war by emerging as a viable non-Gulf alternative source for Africa and Europe in terms of importing jet fuel.

During Monday’s event, Aliko Dangote said that while the refinery had profited from the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, his conglomerate eyes making the energy business ‌sustainable ⁠over the long term.

As per the African business tycoon, UAE’s state energy giant ADNOC was interested in investing in the plant alongside others.

Among the other details mentioned in the IPO prospectus, the refinery made an after-tax profit of USD 1.82 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with ⁠a USD 476 million loss for all of 2025.

Dangote refinery will be initially offering 4.1 billion ordinary shares at 525 naira each. However, the business possesses a “greenshoe option” whereby it could sell up to 30% more if demand exceeds that amount.

“The intent is very much the people’s IPO, ⁠drive wide participation, enable Nigerians and the Nigerian diaspora, and Africans more broadly, and the opportunity to participate in this wealth creation that comes from such an iconic industrial asset, like the Dangote refinery,” David Bird, chief executive of ⁠the refinery, told Reuters.

Aliko Dangote, with a net worth estimated at up to USD 35 billion, also plans to build a refinery on Kenya’s coast in partnership with East African governments.

Talking about the IPO-bound refinery, a private placement in July indicated a valuation of USD 40 billion for the infrastructure. However, some investors and analysts described the ratio as being highly relative when compared to other listed stand-alone oil refiners.

For example, Turkey’s Tupras, ⁠which has a Dangote-like refining capacity spread across four sites, has a market value of about USD 12 billion, while New York-listed HF Sinclair, with a capacity of roughly 678,000 bpd, is valued at about USD 16 billion.

Dangote previously declared his intention of transforming the refinery into one of Africa’s largest companies, generating more than USD 12 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).

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The company sold roughly 280 million shares at HKUSD 48.56 apiece, raising about HKUSD 13.6 billion, or USD 1.74 billion, and valuing itself at around USD 26.5 billion at the offer price.

That was below the top of its marketed range of HKUSD 49.50, and it was still one of the city’s biggest new share sales this year.

The first session was not kind. The stock fell by as much as 10% to HKUSD 43.80 before recovering to close at HKUSD 48.50, a whisker below its issue price and a valuation of about USD 26.3 billion.

Analysts attributed the rebound to stabilisation measures of the sort large listings use to avoid a bruising debut, with Goldman Sachs acting as stabilising manager.

It closed at HKUSD 46 on the second day while the Hang Seng Index finished flat, and by the close on September 3 it was changing hands around HKUSD 42, some 13% below where it was priced.

Chief financial officer Leigh Gui told the listing ceremony that the debut marked “a new starting point”. Founder and chief executive Sky Xu stayed out of the spotlight and let his executives speak.

The price is the story
The headline comparison is unavoidable. At roughly USD 26.5 billion, Shein came to market more than 70% below the USD 98.2 billion it was worth in private funding rounds in 2022.

That gap has been reported as a humiliation, which is only half right. A private mark from 2022 records what one pool of capital paid in one liquidity environment. It is not a benchmark. The more revealing numbers come from the book itself.

The post IF Insights: Shein finally lists, and Hong Kong marks it down appeared first on International Finance.

As per the reports from the ‌Information, Anthropic is also looking to maintain its existing body of non-shareholder trustees with a special class of stock to elect a majority of members to the company’s board of directors.

If Anthropic proceeds with the move, it would mark the first time the AI major’s leaders have extra voting power. The co-founders of Claude hold relatively small ownership stakes in the company compared to the founders of other tech firms.

Amodei himself owns only about 2% of the company, the Information said. However, it should also be kept in mind that dual-class structures aimed at giving supervoting power ‌to ⁠leaders are common among founder-led companies and are designed to give founders greater control and insulate them from short-term shareholder pressure.

SpaceX’s dual-class structure, for instance, gives founder and CEO Elon Musk significant voting power. At Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds about 60% voting control by ⁠way of his ownership of super-voting shares.

Anthropic, preparing for its market debut, has been structured as a public benefit corporation, which is legally required to balance commercial success with social ⁠and public benefit.

The company also has a “Long-Term Benefit Trust,” an independent oversight body that exists to make sure the startup delivers on its public benefit mission.

Talking about Anthropic’s IPO, the venture’s revolving credit facility, in the lead-up to the market debut, may exceed its roughly USD 10 billion target, with Bloomberg reporting about banks jockeying for a piece of the expanded credit line, hoping the involvement will strengthen their case for ⁠a role in the IPO.

Anthropic has reportedly asked the banks most active in arranging the credit facility to commit about USD 1.25 billion each, with a second tier of active lenders encouraged to offer around USD 1 billion. Commitments for less active roles would fall ‌to ⁠about USD 750 million or less.

While the talks are ongoing, Anthropic could decide to limit the size of the revolver to the target or even below. The startup is even projecting its 2028 revenue to be roughly USD 190 billion to USD 200 billion.

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The ‌refinery has submitted an application for a USD 5 billion IPO to Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission, as per the reports. The final size of the listing, however, is not decided yet.

“We really want to drive participation. The mandate of the IPO was to be the people’s IPO,” CEO David Bird told Reuters.

As per Bird, the African energy giant wanted at least three years of ⁠proven production and financial performance before pursuing an overseas listing, which could support a stronger valuation. London has been mentioned as a possible venue.

While Bird didn’t say anything about the IPO’s size or the refinery’s valuation, reports suggest that the company could take into account the USD 2.5 billion raised in a July private placement, which valued the refinery at about USD 40 billion.

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One caveat is worth stating plainly. On robot density, China is not yet the leader. Using updated labour market data from its own statistics bureau, the International Federation of Robotics puts China at 166 robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees, sixth in Asia and 22nd worldwide, against 307 in the United States.

The risks arrived before the shares did. Overseas sales generated 731.66 million yuan in 2025, or 43.65% of main business revenue, and on July 28 the United States Federal Communications Commission added foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots to its Covered List, blocking equipment authorisation for models not already cleared.

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According to compensation consultancy Johnson Associates, bonuses for equity traders and equity capital markets bankers are projected to rise by between 20% and 30% this year, the largest increase across Wall Street. Bankers advising on mergers and acquisitions are expected to receive payouts that are 15% to 20% higher than in 2025.

The upbeat outlook follows a strong earnings season for the largest US banks, driven by robust trading volumes, a resurgence in corporate dealmaking and increased underwriting activity.

“Most of the excitement is coming from the equity side, with stock markets at record highs and volatility increasing trading volume,” said Alan Johnson, founder of Johnson Associates.

Investment and commercial bankers are expected to see bonus growth of at least 10% to 15%, while fixed-income traders could receive increases of between 7.5% and 12.5%. Compensation for bankers underwriting bonds and loans is forecast to rise by between 5% and 10%.

The recovery in dealmaking has been one of the biggest drivers of higher compensation. Years of subdued mergers and acquisitions activity have given way to a growing pipeline of transactions, generating substantial fees for Wall Street firms.

Among the year’s biggest mandates was SpaceX’s blockbuster initial public offering (IPO), which reportedly created a fee pool of around USD 500 million. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which led the deal, are estimated to have earned roughly USD 100 million each, while Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan collected about USD 75 million apiece.

Johnson said the resilience of the US economy had surprised many bankers, despite geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, inflationary pressures and shifting expectations around interest rates.

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