Anthropic chose to release its IPO prospectus at a difficult time.

In the days following the release of the prospectus, several key partners of the company—including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon—announced their quarterly results, which further exacerbated the market's existing concerns regarding the boom in artificial intelligence development.

Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman said in an interview with CNBC on Friday: 'Everyone is still moving forward at full speed on AI, but there have been some interesting twists this week related to all the matters involved.'

He said that the performance of these ultra-large-scale cloud service providers has “drawn attention” and created a new headwind in the market, with “more skepticism regarding their capital structure.”

Regardless of the current market conditions, Anthropic will have to face a group of skeptical investors as it pushes forward with what could be a record-breaking initial public offering in the coming weeks.

In its prospectus submitted on Monday, this AI company disclosed a net loss of $80 billion in the first half of this year, along with commitments for thousands of billions of dollars in computing power, as well as over 90 pages of risk factors. Investors are still awaiting the third-quarter financial data from Anthropic.

Before this week, concerns about the financial health of "new cloud" companies such as CoreWeave and Nebius intensified in the market. These companies were facing rising borrowing costs and a shortage of lenders while pursuing aggressive AI expansion.

Most of the computing power for Anthropic comes from Amazon and Google, as well as SpaceX. However, in the process of expanding as quickly as possible, it also relies on new cloud companies to provide some of the computing power.

Now, investors are becoming increasingly concerned about the entire AI transaction.

David Hsu, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview: "This is a great technology that seems to be capable of doing things we have never imagined before, but how will it ultimately be transformed into a viable business model?"

After a 2.9% decline on Friday, the Nasdaq Composite Index recorded its first three consecutive weeks of declines since March. NVIDIA, whose graphics processors fueled the AI craze, as well as the entire semiconductor sector, saw declines. This came after Intel released a weak outlook, causing its stock price to experience the largest drop since the 1970s.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all signaled concerns in their financial reports this week. Over the past few years, these companies have made substantial investments to meet the surging infrastructure demands associated with AI, but the capital expenditure figures or guidance announced by all three companies fell short of analysts' expectations.

Microsoft has lowered its annual capital expenditure forecast from $175 billion to $170 billion; Alphabet maintains its guidance of up to $205 billion unchanged; Amazon, on the other hand, reiterates its forecast of around $220 billion.

BTIG Managing Director Jonathan Krinsky wrote in a report on Thursday: 'So far, this has been a poor earnings season for the tech sector.'

He referred to this chain reaction as a "tech version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and added that the weakness within the sector has become so pronounced that the market cannot ignore it.

Cash is becoming a problem. Amazon reported negative free cash flow for the second consecutive quarter, with outflows of $42.4 billion over the past 12 months. Google also reported negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion, which was one of the reasons for its stock price plummeting by nearly 13% on Thursday, marking the worst single-day performance in the company's history.

Microsoft maintained a positive free cash flow of $18.6 billion, but it saw a significant decline for the second consecutive quarter. On Thursday, the company announced plans to issue $25 billion in bonds in order to seek additional sources of financing to help fund its infrastructure expansion.

Newman said, 'Suddenly, they would say, "We can no longer rely on free cash flow to finance this."

He said that the concern is that basically no company is able to generate enough cash flow from its own business capabilities to accomplish this task, and "this is becoming increasingly worrying."

Cloud business growth remains strong.

The ultra-large-scale cloud partners of Anthropic are also among its largest investors. In order to keep this momentum going, these companies rely on each other, and this will inevitably become an important topic of discussion during the roadshow that Anthropic is about to conduct.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to the request for comment.

For Anthropic, an important support remains the demand for AI.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all reported cloud business growth that exceeded analysts' expectations, with Google's cloud business revenue more than doubling compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, Oracle – one of the largest spenders in the AI data center – stated during its Investor Day on Wednesday that it will limit new financing to $20 billion in the coming years and expects to achieve positive cash flow in the second half of the next fiscal year.

Analyst Citizens wrote in a report on Thursday that this statement "eliminated investors' biggest concern – namely, that financing for its massive AI infrastructure expansion would require unlimited increases in debt and equity issuance."

As the financial reporting season for hyperscale cloud service providers comes to an end, market attention will now shift back to Anthropic. Investors will assess how much risk they are willing to take and at what price they are prepared to do so.

Since SpaceX made a record issuance in June, the IPO market has largely been in a frozen state. Biometric ring manufacturer Oura, Australian AI data center operator Firmus, and SK's American subsidiary, Solidigm under Hyundai Electronics, have recently postponed or abandoned their listing plans. NewCloud, which submitted its listing application in September, has not updated its prospectus for weeks, as has SB Energy under SoftBank.

Newman indicates that for a company like Anthropic which may hold "generational significance," the fear of missing out (fear of missing out) in the market (FOMO) is indeed real. Moreover, this prospectus is "very impressive," showing a year-on-year sales growth of 1300%, a net revenue retention rate of 900%, and an implied gross margin of 85%.

He said, “Anthropic is the current IPO market. I believe that companies that truly want to go public during this period must be extremely cautious; otherwise, it would be foolish.”

Jordan Novet, Annie Palmer, and Samantha Subin of CNBC also contributed to this report.

View: Anthropic Large-scale AI expenditures may be the key to its profitability: Ark Invest