New York City Comptroller Urges Anthropic to Delay IPO Over AI Safety, Governance

01:16 PM EDT, 10/15/2026 (MT Newswires) -- New York City Comptroller Mark Levine urged Anthropic to pause its planned initial public offering until it addresses concerns about AI safety, governance and the pace of development. In a letter dated Wednesday to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Levine cited the company's own public warnings about frontier-model risks, including statements that "unchecked recursive self-improvement could outrun human oversight" and that advanced AI may pose "catastrophic or existential" dangers, as reported in the draft registration statement. Levine, who oversees New York City's pension funds with more than $325 billion in assets, also raised concerns about Anthropic's proposed governance structure and the potential concentration of control among founders and trustees. He called on Anthropic to detail its planned safety audits and controls, including their scope and implementation timeline, and said the company should address these issues before proceeding with an IPO reportedly valued at about $2 trillion.