Anthropic Posts $16.96 Billion Quarter as Net Loss Narrows Ahead of IPO

Anthropic's revenue climbed 47% from the prior quarter to $16.96 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30, the AI company said in an amended S-1 filing Monday, as its net loss narrowed to $23.29 billion from $66.3 billion in the second quarter.

The top line marked a roughly 12-fold increase from a year earlier, when revenue was $1.4 billion, according to AFP. But the pace of growth slowed sharply: revenue had risen 144% in the second quarter, Reuters reported. Anthropic filed its original prospectus last week.

The amended filing lands as the company prepares to begin formally marketing shares to prospective investors, with plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker "ANT," the New York Post reported. The Post, citing Bloomberg, said the IPO is expected before Thanksgiving, though Anthropic has not confirmed timing.

Operating loss returns

Beneath the revenue jump, Anthropic swung back to an operating loss of $567 million in the third quarter, compared with operating income of $974 million in the second. The company attributed the loss primarily to $5.0 billion of compute under short-term commitments, which it said costs significantly more than comparable multiyear arrangements, Business Insider reported.

Compute and infrastructure charges rose to $9.9 billion in the quarter, a fourfold increase in a year, according to Business Insider. Anthropic said the additional compute costs weighed on efficiency improvements and reduced revenue per dollar of compute from the previous quarter, Reuters reported.

The net loss included non-operating items tied to bonds convertible into Anthropic's shares, per Reuters, while AFP reported the loss stemmed mostly from non-cash accounting charges linked to the company's rising valuation.

The $895 billion question

Anthropic disclosed about $895.4 billion in spending commitments related to computing deals with partners including Amazon and Alphabet's Google — among the largest AI infrastructure commitments on record. Nearly half is expected to be incurred before Dec. 31, 2030, with about $69.8 billion due in the 12 months following Sept. 30, Reuters reported.

"Certain of our compute providers and infrastructure partners depend on third-party financing or credit support to acquire chips and develop capacity, and if such financing or support becomes unavailable or more costly, contracted capacity may be delayed, repriced, reduced, or not delivered," Anthropic said in the filing.

"We will be looking at when that capacity becomes available, when payments begin and how revenue grows against those obligations," said Evan Schlossman and Willy Lee, principals at VC firm Neostellar, according to Reuters.

Investors are weighing a valuation of about $1.5 trillion, down from roughly $2 trillion, after Anthropic disclosed financial details at a recent investor event, Reuters reported.

"I wouldn't say these results are worrisome, but I do expect some of this pressure on growth and margins to be reflected in the ultimate IPO valuation," Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, told Reuters.

The filing landed as an early rebound on Wall Street petered out, with renewed selling in technology stocks highlighting investor anxiety over the AI boom. Amazon shares closed higher while Alphabet ended the session flat, Reuters reported; Business Times put the moves at a 4% gain and a 2.1% rise, respectively.

The Register's Kettle podcast, reviewing the filing, noted that revenue outpaced compute expenses two to one for the first time in the company's history.

Customer growth, and a costly payroll

Anthropic said it had more than 11,900 customers generating at least $100,000 in revenue on a trailing 12-month basis as of Sept. 30, up from more than 1,500 at the end of 2025.

Personnel expenses topped $1.7 billion for its 5,300 workers from July through September — an average of more than $322,000 per worker over the quarter — Business Insider reported. Stock-based compensation accounted for $1.1 billion of that. Over the first nine months of 2026, personnel costs totaled $4.8 billion, and the company said it had more than $32 billion in stock-based compensation expenses not yet reflected in its accounting.

Anthropic quintupled headcount between the end of 2024 and the end of September 2026. It reported $6.6 million in annual revenue per employee, against estimates of $3.2 million for Meta and $2.5 million for Google, per Business Insider. "Talent density matters more than talent mass," the company wrote in its S-1.

Risk factors

The prospectus devotes more than 90 pages to risk factors, including warnings that Anthropic's most advanced models could "give rise to novel ethical and safety risks, including risks related to autonomy, manipulation, and the simulation of aspects of human psychology," the New York Post reported. The filing also warned of models displaying "self-preserving behaviors," including resisting attempts to shut them down or "blackmail," and said the company is targeted by individuals seeking employment under false identities.

Anthropic said it is considering tighter human oversight of some research and development decisions as its models perform an increasing share of that work, Reuters reported. CEO Dario Amodei has called for a slowdown in their development.