What Anthropic told investors
Anthropic's third-quarter revenue climbed 45 per cent from the previous quarter to 16.8 billion dollars, according to an investor who attended a pre-IPO meeting with the company's leadership in San Francisco on Wednesday. The figure, first reported by Reuters, was shared with prospective public-market investors during a day-long session designed to familiarise Wall Street with the artificial-intelligence company ahead of its highly anticipated stock market debut.
The same person told Reuters that revenue was 4.7 billion dollars in the first quarter and 11.6 billion dollars in the second. On those figures, Anthropic's quarterly revenue has more than tripled since January, and the first nine months of 2026 add up to roughly 33.1 billion dollars. The company also told the group it was profitable on an adjusted basis in the third quarter — though it did not spell out which costs were excluded from that measure. Other people familiar with the matter said the quarter also produced positive free cash flow with an adjusted gross margin of 85 per cent, suggesting the economics of its AI business are starting to turn.
Anthropic has not published the figures itself. They come from a single attendee at an event staged to introduce the company to future shareholders, so they should be read with that caveat. But the numbers are consistent with earlier reporting: last year, Anthropic's revenue increased twelvefold to nearly 4.6 billion dollars, even as the company lost more than 8 billion dollars on an operating basis. Its third-quarter result alone is more than three times everything it earned in the whole of 2025.
The $2 trillion question
Anthropic is targeting a valuation of more than 2 trillion dollars, according to Reuters. At that level, the listing would rank among the largest initial public offerings in history — and the most important test yet of whether public markets will pay up for an AI company that is scaling ferociously but still spending at an extraordinary rate.
The company had set its October 14 investor day after shifting its IPO to November, and formal marketing could begin the week of November 9, putting a trading debut before Thanksgiving within reach. Reuters has previously reported the offering is likely to be pushed until after the November 3 US midterm elections. The listing is expected to precede a public debut by rival OpenAI, which makes Anthropic an early gauge of investor appetite for heavily loss-making AI developers pursuing massive scale.
The timing could hardly be more delicate. Scrutiny of AI companies' finances has intensified as they pour money into chips, data centres and computing power needed to develop and operate increasingly powerful models. Anthropic told investors last month it has committed at least 518 billion dollars over a decade under long-term agreements for cloud services, computing and infrastructure — a spending commitment that will hang over every conversation the company has with public investors.
Where the money comes from
Anthropic's expansion has been underpinned by two of the biggest names in technology. Alphabet's Google and Amazon are simultaneously investors in the company, suppliers of the computing power it uses to train and run its Claude models, and important distribution partners — as well as AI competitors in their own right. The entangled relationship means Anthropic's growth and its largest backers' fortunes are bound together in ways investors will scrutinise closely once a prospectus is filed.
Founded by former OpenAI executives, Anthropic has emerged as one of the leading generative-AI developers with its Claude family of models, selling access to enterprises and developers as well as through its consumer products. The company has also sought to distinguish itself through its focus on AI safety, warning of the dangers posed by increasingly capable systems even as it races to commercialise more powerful models. That positioning has helped it win corporate customers wary of reputational risk — and will be part of the story it tells public investors about why its growth can endure.
For ordinary investors, the figures are a useful reality check on the AI economy. Hardware suppliers have captured most of the sector's profit so far; Anthropic's numbers are among the first pieces of tangible evidence that an AI model developer itself can convert explosive revenue growth into real profitability. In a market suddenly obsessed with who pays for the AI buildout — as the sharp moves in global markets this week show — evidence that the demand side of the trade is healthy matters. When markets swing this violently, investors often keep one eye on live currency and market data tools to gauge the damage across regions.
Why analysts are still cautious
Strong numbers, however, have not dispelled the gloom hanging over the AI trade. Anthropic's third-quarter results may strengthen the case for its expected IPO, but they are unlikely to revive investor enthusiasm in the broader AI theme, some investors and analysts told the Hindu BusinessLine. The results landed as global AI stocks struggled with rising bond yields, oil-driven inflation and funding concerns around companies such as CoreWeave, the AI cloud provider whose bonds have been yielding close to 15 per cent.
