Anthropic told prospective investors on Wednesday that its revenue for the third quarter was $16.8 billion, up 45 per cent from the second quarter, and that it made a profit on an adjusted basis, Reuters reported, citing two attendees of an investor day at the company's San Francisco headquarters. The Financial Times reported the same revenue figure, along with positive cash flow, according to an account published by Yahoo Finance. Anthropic has not published the numbers, and Reuters said the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The headline is a growth number, and by this publication's arithmetic it is a slower one than the quarter before. Reuters reports that revenue was $11.6 billion in the second quarter and $4.7 billion in the first. That makes the third-quarter increase $5.2 billion, or 45 per cent. The second-quarter increase was $6.9 billion, or about 147 per cent. Revenue is still rising quickly. It is rising by a smaller dollar amount.
What was reported, and by whom
Reuters said attendees met Chief Executive Dario Amodei and Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao, and that several were encouraged by the company's revenue growth and path to profitability. According to those attendees, the company said it was profitable on an adjusted basis in the quarter. The FT, in the account relayed by Yahoo Finance, said it was the second consecutive quarter of adjusted profit and that Anthropic generated "$1.70 in revenue for every $1 spent on computing power."
The comparison period matters, and Reuters is explicit that the 45 per cent is growth on the previous quarter, not on a year earlier. The Yahoo account itself notes that adjusted profitability and positive cash flow "do not necessarily establish profitability under standard accounting measures." Neither report says what the adjustments are.
The scale, and the bill behind it
For context, Reuters reports that Anthropic's revenue grew about twelvefold last year to nearly $4.6 billion, and that it posted an operating loss of more than $8 billion, excluding writedowns mostly tied to earlier fundraising. By this publication's arithmetic, the third quarter alone was about 3.7 times the whole of 2025. Reuters also reports that the company has committed at least $518 billion over a decade to cloud services, computing and infrastructure.
Much of the revenue reaches customers through the companies that supply that computing. Reuters, citing a copy of Anthropic's confidential IPO filing, reported on 30 September that Anthropic routed 47 per cent of its 2025 sales, about $2.16 billion, through the cloud marketplaces of Amazon and Alphabet's Google, up from 11 per cent in 2023 and 32 per cent in 2024. Those sales are made to customers through the two platforms rather than to Amazon and Google as buyers. Both companies are also Anthropic investors, suppliers of its computing power and competitors in AI.
The run rate is where the outside estimates diverge. Reuters says analysts who met executives estimate the annual run rate could reach $110 billion by year-end. The FT, as relayed by Yahoo, says annualised revenue is expected to stay below $100 billion. Multiplying the third quarter by four gives $67.2 billion. A run rate is a projection, not revenue booked, and the two estimates are more than $10 billion apart.
Valuation and the listing
Reuters reports that Anthropic is seeking a valuation of more than $2 trillion, that its listing is expected to come before one by OpenAI, and that the debut will likely be delayed until after the U.S. midterm elections in November. We have written separately about OpenAI sounding out a $1.5 trillion valuation.
According to Reuters, which says it saw the prospectus last month, the document warns that advanced AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity." One attendee told Reuters that Amodei spoke about AI safety at the event but avoided discussing the risk of human extinction. Executives also described using the company's own AI tools to run the business, including to help design a custom chip, Reuters reports.
What to watch
The test is the public filing. A prospectus has to define "adjusted" in the company's own words and reconcile it to the standard accounting loss that investors will compare with other listings. It will also update how much of the revenue runs through the two cloud groups that are also investors and suppliers. Until then, the third-quarter figures are what attendees heard in a room, as told to reporters by people who were not named.
Sources
- Reuters, report on Anthropic's investor day (republished by CTech/Calcalist), 15 October 2026: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/tgb6eqw4z
- Yahoo Finance, account of the Financial Times report on Anthropic's third quarter, 15 October 2026: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/anthropic-reports-45-revenue-growth-102235753.html
- Reuters, "Anthropic relies on Amazon and Google for nearly half its sales" (republished by CTech/Calcalist), 30 September 2026: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r8sh14ux4
The quarterly revenue figures, the adjusted-profit claim, the run-rate estimate, the $518 billion of commitments, the valuation target and the IPO timing come from Reuters on 15 October 2026, which cites two attendees of Wednesday's investor day; we read it as republished by Calcalist's CTech. The cash-flow, compute-ratio and second-quarter-of-profit details come from the Financial Times of 14 October as relayed by Yahoo Finance on 15 October; we did not read the FT directly. Reuters, not the company, is the source for describing the 45 per cent as growth on the prior quarter, and the quarterly figures support it. The Amazon and Google sales share comes from a Reuters report of 30 September on Anthropic's confidential IPO filing, also read via CTech. A reported discussion of a $1.5 trillion valuation appeared only in secondary aggregators and a machine-translated Korean report, so we have left it out. Anthropic has not published any of these figures and nothing here comes from the company on the record. Anthropic makes the Claude AI models. The dollar-gain and annualisation figures are this publication's arithmetic. The analysis is our own.
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