Anthropic plans to go public at a time when AI tokens have never been cheaper

Anthropic's ( ANTH.PVT ) highly anticipated IPO comes as the cost of running AI models continues to decline, raising questions about pricing pressure amid intensifying competition.

The AI developer that makes the Claude chatbot publicly filed paperwork for an IPO on Monday.

Anthropic generates revenue primarily through usage-based pricing, metered in tokens. Customers are charged rates that vary by Claude model, as well as subscription fees for its products. The company said consumption-based revenue accounted for 80% of total revenue in the first half of 2026, and subscriptions contributed the remaining 20%.

In the risks section of its filing, the AI developer noted its future growth depends on its ability to attract new customers, retain existing customers, and expand sales.

Potential risks include "changes in customer budgets or strategic priorities regarding AI investment" and "pricing changes or perception that our pricing is not competitive."

The filing comes as the cost of completing standard AI tasks has fallen by about 47% per quarter since 2023, or roughly 13 times per year, according to the AI research institute Epoch AI.

The data measured how much it costs AI models to solve problems in areas such as math, science, and games, finding that prices have fallen faster than those of other transformative technologies, including DNA sequencing, computing, and lithium batteries.

Pricing of AI tokens has become increasingly important as enterprise customers seek to reduce costs following the unbounded spending of the brief "tokenmaxxing" era .

IBM ( IBM ) CEO Arvind Krishna has noted that enterprises are increasingly focusing on their AI costs , shifting to open-weight, less expensive models that can be run locally or on private clouds.

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"They are also getting worried if some of the AI spending is completely out of control with no real return," said Krishna during the tech company's recent earnings call.

More companies have been turning to open-source models from US and Chinese AI developers, which are less expensive and can be run locally or on private clouds.

Anthropic and OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ) have responded to demand for more affordable models.

Earlier this month, Anthropic unveiled the Claude Haiku 5.5 model, the latest in its Claude 5.5 family, promising improved and lower costs than its predecessor.

Anthropic said Haiku 5.5 costs an average of 75% less than Haiku 4.5. Customers will pay $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens. That's in line with rival OpenAI's ( OPAI.PVT ) smallest model, GPT-6 Luna.

Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance.