A week ago, Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, made its IPO filing public. On Monday, it added fresh third-quarter numbers, and they tell a more complicated story than the first round of headlines.
The top line is still huge. According to Fortune, Revenue for July through September came in at $17 billion, up from $11.6 billion in the second quarter and just $1.4 billion a year earlier. But quarter-over-quarter growth slowed to about 47%, down from roughly 144% the quarter before. When a company is that big, slowing down is almost inevitable, but investors notice these things right before an IPO.
Costs grew faster than sales. Operating expenses rose to $17.5 billion from $10.6 billion, which flipped a $974 million operating profit in the second quarter into a $567 million operating loss. Anthropic blamed two things. It had to buy short-term computing power, which it says costs a lot more than the capacity it gets under long-term deals, and it took about $2 billion in non-cash charges tied to an employee donation matching program. Strip those out, along with stock pay, and the company says it was still profitable, though its adjusted margin slipped to 15% from 19%. Price cuts and discounts also shaved about $600 million off revenue.
The number that made people stop scrolling, though, is its commitments. Anthropic has signed up for about $895.4 billion in future spending, mostly on computing and infrastructure. It also reported a $23.3 billion net loss, largely from an accounting charge on convertible notes, and has $146.6 billion in cash, investments and credit available.
The listing on Nasdaq under the ticker "ANT" is still expected soon.
Does a nearly trillion-dollar compute bill scare you off, or is that just the price of competing in AI?
