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KC Kate Clark On WSJ Tech News Briefing

“They have 90-plus pages of risk factors that border on science fiction. One that stood out to me was that it said its technology may cause an incident so catastrophic that the entire insurance industry might lack the capacity to cover the damages. And that's just one of many across dozens of pages of frankly frightening risk factors.”

WSJ Tech News Briefing · October 2026

“They have 90-plus pages of risk factors that border on science fiction. One that stood out to me was that it said its technology may cause an incident so catastrophic that the entire insurance industry might lack the capacity to cover the damages. And that's just one of many across dozens of pages of frankly frightening risk factors.” — Kate Clark, WSJ Tech News Briefing

Context

Asked what struck her as unusual about Anthropic's S-1, Kate contrasts the company's stated goal of building AI safely with the severity of the risks it discloses to investors.

Transcript

WSJ Tech News Briefing Around 04:04 into the episode
Kate Clark

…And although they are generating significant revenue, $16 billion in the first six months of this year, up from just $400 million two years ago, in order for this to eventually one day become a profitable business, they need to continue to raise a lot of money to fund that compute build out.

Bob McMillan

Kate, I just wonder what to you stood out as just this is not a normal company kind of in the S1?

Kate Clark

Yeah, I mean, I think we all know that Anthropic's stated goal is to develop this AI as safely as possible. But at the same time, as you've both alluded to, they have 90 plus pages of risk factors that border on science fiction. I think perhaps one of my favorites or one that stood out to me the most was that it said that its technology may cause an incident so catastrophic that the entire insurance industry might lack the capacity to cover the damages. I think, you know, and that's just one of many across dozens of pages of, frankly, frightening risk factors.

Bob McMillan

If you're an investor, what is the risk you're most worried about, though?

Kate Clark

Oh, I think for the investors, they're most worried about does this company, will this company have the infrastructure it needs to continue growing at the rate? And I think investors are also worried about the company being able to sustain the growth, the pace of revenue growth. I think they know…

Bob McMillan

I mean, how do they fend that off, Berber? Like, it seems to me that, you know, sometimes when I look at these companies, these frontier companies, they remind me of like Unix companies from the 1980s and 1990s where they're building these like super systems that are just, they're just like…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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