Op-Ed Urges SEC to Block Anthropic IPO Over Compute Debts

Matt Scherer, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute, argues in a Tech Policy Press op-ed that the Securities and Exchange Commission should block Anthropic's planned November IPO until the company publishes two consecutive quarters of audited financial statements. The ask rests on a single asymmetry buried in the footnotes: nearly $900 billion in spending commitments against $96 billion in cash.

Scherer, co-author of the report 'Brace for Impact: Protecting people and the economy when the AI bubble bursts,' reads the amended registration as a document whose topline looks 'quite impressive for a startup' only 'on the surface.' Below it sits $582 billion in non-cancelable commitments to Amazon, AMD, Broadcom, Google, and Microsoft for compute. Those obligations, Scherer writes, 'are effectively debts in a legal and practical sense,' even though they do not appear on Anthropic's balance sheet.

The infrastructure math is the hinge. A 1 GW data center runs an estimated $31 billion to build; Anthropic has committed to 15 GW and estimates it will ultimately need 20 to 25 GW. Scherer's demand-side counterpoint is a workforce survey showing the number of Americans using AI at work falling 'between the summers of 2025 (46%) and 2026 (33%),' alongside what he calls the 'tepid' commercial reception of Anthropic's Fable 5 model this summer.

The remedy keys off the SEC's own statutory language, which permits delay when a registration statement is 'on its face incomplete or inaccurate in any material respect.' Scherer argues that fits a prospectus with unaudited results for the fastest-growing period, major obligations in the footnotes, and fresh 11-digit commitments announced as the IPO approaches. The piece lands the same week our tracker logged the amended S-1 disclosing roughly $895.4B in compute commitments and a day after secondary buyers pushed the implied valuation to $1.5T.

'The SEC should block Anthropic's stock market debut until the company provides two consecutive quarters of audited financial statements, with all material information about the company's spending commitments disclosed,' Scherer writes. 'Failing to do so could have dire consequences for workers, investors, and ultimately the financial system and economy.'