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Comment by seafoam | Hacker News Reader

Anthropic would publish audited financial statements, if they saw it to be in their interest.

As someone who does not understand how IPO works. So they do not need to show whole “big picture” of their revenue vs costs before going public? Wouldn’t build it trust to show they are healthy company worth investing besides speculation? (It must be naive question from)

No, as i understand it: the underwriters are the banks that write out the shares and give a sort of guarantee. So they decide the price of the IPO.

Yes, they have to file an S-1 with the SEC as part of the process. This lays out business operations in detail, including risks. For instance, here is the SpaceX S-1: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026...

Yes they do. They have to file an S-1 with the SEC, which will be made public about a month before the IPO.

The S-1 has to include, among other things, three years of audited financial statements, plus interim statements (unaudited). It will cover both revenue and expenses, the latter breaking out things like cost of revenue, R&D, sales and marketing etc.

Based on the (unofficial but reported) IPO target date of late Sep to early Oct, the S-1 will have to be made public in a few weeks from now.

They do, but the accounting rules change based on context. They will file an S1 today outlining how they are rolling in profits then, come tax time, suddenly they are hemorrhaging money. Flesh-and-blood investors have lost all trust in financial filings. See SpaceX.

You think Elon Musk fans were reading the financials???

The financials were always bad. Everyone with half a brain avoided the IPO. Did you?

Exactly. The financial filings don't matter. Even the people that read them immediately dismiss them.

Of course they do. The HN braintrust is mostly financially illiterate and sees conspiracies and fraud everywhere.

This is the biggest capital buildout on history. Saying money will be wasted is not insightful, it's obvious.

It is still in their interest to not report "false or misleading statements that you or others on your behalf make regarding your company."

https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/exempt-offeri...

Which pre-IPO companies publish audited financial statements?

And why would it be in their interest...?

Scratching my head too. Why? Spend a lot of money and effort, to share info you don’t have to, which can only create liability?

It's obviously not in their interest. Disclosing would only work as marketing for their IPO and it's the most anticipated IPO in history and needs no marketing. There is like zero positive side to disclosing audited financial statements and massive liability.

"There is like zero positive side to disclosing audited financial statements and massive liability."

Why are you posting about stuff you have zero clue about?

Oh theres no positive side... yes there is. There is a huge amount of failure risk weighing on both OAI and Anthropic - investors don't care about how great you claim your technology is gonna be. They want to know if a viable buisiness model is taking form and whether you will be around long enough given the investment time horizon of the investor.

Right now China is making that failure risk even larger. This directly affects the IPO.

sounds like you dont know what you are talking about. Investors in anthropic dont need public only info. They get disclosures already.

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