Anthropic struggling with Chinese competition, its own safety obsession

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.

Against this backdrop, recent cost-saving moves designed to reduce token demand during peak hours fail to inspire optimism.

But there's a more fundamental risk – remaining relevant in the face of increasingly capable competition from China.

On Monday, the US-China Economic and Security ...