Anthropic’s big financial reveal

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And a scoop: A former senior UK police officer has raised funding from top Silicon Valley venture capital firms including Sequoia at a valuation of almost $400mn to launch a company providing AI services for law enforcement.

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In today’s newsletter:

• Anthropic drops its S-1
• Apollo buys a piece of Mubadala
• Weil’s leadership crisis

Anthropic drops its S-1

Apollo buys a piece of Mubadala

Weil’s leadership crisis

The AI metrics everyone is watching

Anthropic has finally published its IPO prospectus and it seems this won’t be a WeWork moment.

As in, the Claude developer’s opening of its finances to public scrutiny hasn’t immediately flopped with prospective investors the way WeWork’s implausibly adjusted “profits” did.

Instead, the long-awaited S-1 depicts a company with soaring revenues, a healthy balance sheet and positive cash flow. Its revenue grew 1,368 per cent year on year in the second quarter and the start-up has a cash pile of $112bn on hand, uncommonly large for a company ahead of an IPO.

The FT has a thorough analysis of what the prospectus reveals about Anthropic’s business and plans, as well as a live blog featuring the most interesting parts of the disclosure.

Lead underwriters Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley seem to have a sellable business they can pitch to interested investors in one of the biggest-ever IPOs, though we at DD are loath to gloss over caveats and red flags.

There are plenty. Anthropic is still lossmaking and its near-$9bn outlay on computing power and infrastructure in the first six months of this year is the beginning of its spending spigot.

It also has a concentrated base of customers who aren’t locked into long-term contracts and can swap out its tools relatively easily. Just five customers accounted for 25 per cent of revenue in the first nine months of the year.

And here’s a doozy: Anthropic warns of civilisational risks, which at minimum could attract regulatory scrutiny. The start-up said its technology might pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity” or “provide meaningful assistance to malicious actors”. Some of these risks may be uninsurable, according to the prospectus.

One thing Anthropic didn’t disclose is the valuation the company is targeting. Lex notes that the company’s future growth is nearly impossible to predict, and whether investors buy in at the chosen valuation comes down to whether they “believe the company is a big winner in a brave new world, or they don’t”.

If the frontier AI lab succeeds in listing — which many believe must happen before Thanksgiving — the IPO could help pump fresh cash into the entire AI ecosystem.

Anthropic’s spending on chips and leases will add to the firepower of tech giants such as SpaceX and Nvidia who can then backstop ever more AI ventures. Anthropic already has $800bn in data centre spending commitments spread as far into the future as 2045.

Large swaths of the market will be touched by its largesse, as evidenced by the fact that the Nasdaq rose about 1 per cent on Monday when the prospectus landed.

Of the metrics that were left blank in the filing, there’s one that caught DD’s attention: the start-up’s run-rate revenue as of October. Anthropic’s revenues are contingent on consumers using its product, and this is the metric to watch. As DD noted earlier this month, the entire market seems to be trading on it.

When Anthropic fills in this gap, it will be a market-moving story and a pivotal moment for the IPO.

Mubadala’s big Apollo deal

Apollo Global is buying a minority stake in Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Capital, the private capital arm backed by the eponymous government investment fund.

The deal marks a busy stretch for the $60bn-in-assets firm, which has often orbited Michael Milken, the “junk bond king”, whose spawn of acolytes dominate the $25tn private markets.

In 2024, Mubadala Capital sold a piece of itself to Silver Rock Financial, the former family office of Milken.

It left Silver Rock and Milken’s family office as the first outside investors in Mubadala Capital, which is predominantly backed by Abu Dhabi, and marked its ambitions to grow on Wall Street.

Since 2024 Mubadala Capital has executed a wave of high-profile acquisitions, buying a majority stake in credit manager Fortress and then striking a larger deal to buy Canadian financial conglomerate CI Financial. This year, it backstopped the takeover of US annuity seller Brighthouse Financial, though the deal is subject to a review by US insurance regulators.

To bolster its dealmaking, Mubadala Capital has turned to familiar faces in Milken’s sphere.

In April 2025, it struck a partnership with Guggenheim founder Mark Walter, considered by some a protégé of Milken. In that deal, Walter’s family office was to buy a minority equity stake in Mubadala Capital as part of billions of dollars in future deals between the firms.

One early effort was Mubadala Capital and Walter’s takeover of billboard operator Clear Channel. It counted on an equity investment up to $1.1bn from Walter.

However, Walter’s empire has recently faced scrutiny and US probes into its accounting treatment of tens of billions of dollars in affiliated assets at insurers he owns.

Walter’s investment in Mubadala Capital never closed, the FT reported. He also made just a fraction of the $1.1bn investment in Clear Channel when the takeover was completed earlier this month.

But another Milken devotee, Apollo, has stepped up with cash.

The firm, founded by disciples of Milken at his now-defunct investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, is buying a high-single-digit equity stake in Mubadala Capital, the FT reports.

The two investment groups have a longstanding relationship. Apollo recently provided financing to Mubadala’s Clear Channel deal, while Mubadala has seeded some of Apollo’s newest funds.

Taking on Apollo, a $1tn private markets behemoth, may be an upgrade compared with Walter and his complex finances.

It also comes as Apollo chief executive Marc Rowan has called out lax regulation and hot money in private markets. His most recent target: Walter’s insurers and their regulator, the US state of Delaware, which is also home to Mubadala target Brighthouse.

Weil’s escalating talent crisis

The fortunes of Weil, Gotshal & Manges are changing rapidly, and everyone in Big Law is paying attention.

More than two dozen partners have decided to leave the Wall Street law firm since this spring. The steady march of departures became a stampede last month when Weil’s best-known US corporate dealmaker Michael Aiello joined the exodus, bringing a team of five partners along with him to Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Now the firm is facing a leadership crisis as well after the FT revealed over the weekend that the partner chosen to lead it from January had decided she wasn’t going to take the top job after all.

Ramona Nee, who was to become Weil’s executive partner in January, is walking away from the role, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, a decision that casts doubt on her future at the firm and its viability as an independent institution.

The wave of departures has forced Weil to contemplate a merger with a rival firm, but various efforts have so far failed to yield a deal.

Merger talks will only grow more difficult if partners continue to leave, because a law firm is the sum of its talent — and Weil’s is thinning out.

For rivals, especially smaller ones, the unravelling of a well-established firm of about 1,200 lawyers is a cautionary tale of how precarious the legal business can be.

Job moves

• Eurazeo has named Christophe Bavière sole chair of the executive board and CEO.
• Cleary Gottlieb has elected 15 new partners from offices including New York, Washington and Brussels.
• Ropes & Gray has elected 26 new partners from offices in Boston, London and New York.

Eurazeo has named Christophe Bavière sole chair of the executive board and CEO.

Cleary Gottlieb has elected 15 new partners from offices including New York, Washington and Brussels.

Ropes & Gray has elected 26 new partners from offices in Boston, London and New York.

Smart reads

Energy politics A $25bn US gas export venture could become embroiled in the fraught relationship between Washington and Moscow after its former CEO told the FT that Russian energy giant Novatek is secretly controlling the project.

Sage advice Five years out from his career as an investment banker, Craig Coben is getting peppered with questions about the AI boom. He reflects for the FT on what banking really taught him.

Flying cars Carmakers are moving beyond mere vehicle sales as they set their sights on generating recurring revenues from software and AI-powered services, the FT reports. Elon Musk is leading the charge.

News round-up

Meta plans $95bn stock offering to bankroll AI expansion (FT)

EQT to buy Range Resources in natural gas megadeal (FT)

DWS to honour just 10% of redemption requests at flagship property fund (FT)

Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 staff (FT)

Bon Secours agrees $5.7bn takeover of Bain-backed Surgery Partners (FT)

DoorDash is in advanced talks to acquire delivery rival Instacart (WSJ)

Due Diligence is written by Arash Massoudi, Ivan Levingston, Ortenca Aliaj, Alexandra Heal, Euan Healy and Aaron Kirchfeld in London, Julia Rock, Sujeet Indap, Antoine Gara, Amelia Pollard, Kaye Wiggins and Oliver Barnes in New York, Eric Platt in Los Angeles, George Hammond in San Francisco and Arjun Neil Alim in Hong Kong. Please send feedback to due.diligence@ft.com

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