A former executive who directly experienced Facebook's initial public offering voiced concerns about Anthropic's push to list. He said Anthropic could follow Facebook's path, where revenue and share price growth took priority after listing and user safety was pushed aside.

Business Insider reported on Nov. 11 that former Facebook vice president Brian Boland (브라이언 볼랜드) said this based on his 11 years at the company and his experience watching the changes after its 2012 IPO. Boland left the company in 2020.

Boland recalled that he believed Facebook would keep its mission and identity and continue operating as before ahead of the listing, but it did not. Just before the IPO, General Motors publicly declared it would halt Facebook advertising spending after questioning its effectiveness, and the company had to respond to ease market concerns about its advertising business model.

After the IPO, the share price became a key management metric. The company used stock to hire engineers and secure talent, meaning the share price directly affected its growth. As revenue growth became more important, CEO Mark Zuckerberg assigned revenue targets to every product and service organisation. Boland said the company initially prioritised user experience, but that approach gradually weakened as revenue pressure grew.

He said Silicon Valley companies tend to use their missions to justify revenue growth and rising share prices. He said they end up focusing on product growth and revenue targets rather than whether they made the world more open and connected or helped users build communities.

Boland said a similar pattern could be repeated in Anthropic's IPO. He pointed in particular to Anthropic's registration statement, or S-1, which he said gives significant weight to product risks. He said if attention and investment concentrate on growth and hiring, safety-related organisations and staffing could be pushed aside.

He also described as a contradiction that Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, has argued the company should slow down to develop safer products and that safety could be improved even with a delay of 1 year, while the company is hurrying an IPO this month. Boland recalled that Facebook also should have invested more in safety but sacrificed user protection for revenue growth.

He stressed that Anthropic should build a sufficient safety framework and clearly disclose its financial condition before pursuing a listing. He said it should transparently disclose audited financial statements and profitability outlook that investors can understand, as well as its cross-circular investment structure and the size of its debt. He said a listed company is connected to a broad base of investors through index funds and therefore must meet a certain level of financial soundness and risk management standards.

Boland said he is not opposed to AI itself and uses related technology in his daily life. He added that development and business expansion do not need to proceed at the current pace. While describing Anthropic as ahead of its rivals, he said its safety measures are not sufficient and that investors need to speak up. If growth in the AI industry continues and problems arise, he said, damage could spread to investors across the entire market.