By PYMNTS | October 15, 2026
Highlights
Anthropic’s third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, more than three times what it earned in all of 2025, while OpenAI’s annualized run rate sits near $50 billion.
Anthropic earned $1.70 for every dollar spent on compute last quarter and posted an 11% adjusted operating margin, its second straight adjusted profit.
Growth slowed to 45%, and investors have cut year-end forecasts to about $74 billion, against at least $518 billion in infrastructure commitments and a 2028 revenue target of $190 billion to $200 billion.
In 2025, OpenAI earned nearly $3 of revenue for every dollar Anthropic did. Nine months later, Anthropic booked more in a single quarter than it did in all of last year, and it told investors it did so at a profit.
That is the case Anthropic made Wednesday (Oct. 14) at a daylong meeting at its San Francisco headquarters, where it said third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, up 45% from the second quarter, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. Anthropic was profitable on an adjusted basis for the second quarter in a row.
The scale of the shift is clearer against last year’s numbers. Anthropic generated $4.6 billion in revenue for all of 2025, Reuters reported Sept. 28, citing the company’s confidential initial public offering (IPO) prospectus. OpenAI was three times ahead at $13.07 billion in revenue, according to a June report by independent journalist and AI industry critic Ed Zitron, which was verified by the FT.
Anthropic’s climb has been steep. Revenue went from $4.8 billion in the first quarter to $11.6 billion in the second and $16.8 billion in the third. Each quarter this year has exceeded the company’s entire 2025.
OpenAI’s lead has meanwhile come into sharper focus. The company told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, about $20 billion below the expected $70 billion, the FT reported Oct. 8, citing documents shared with investors.
Anthropic is taking these numbers to the public markets first. The company is seeking a valuation above $2 trillion in a listing expected after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, according to the Reuters report.
OpenAI filed confidentially for its own IPO in June, PYMNTS reported June 8.
Anthropic’s pitch rests on more than the size of its sales. It also rests on how much each dollar of those sales now costs to produce.
Anthropic Earns $1.70 for Every Dollar Spent on Compute
Anthropic’s biggest expense is computing power, which cost the company more than it generated in revenue last year. In 2025, Anthropic spent $7.33 billion on computing and infrastructure against nearly $4.6 billion in revenue and posted an over $8 billion operating loss, the Reuters report said.
That relationship has since reversed. In the third quarter, Anthropic generated $1.70 in revenue for every dollar spent on computing power, according to the FT’s Wednesday report. The improvement lifted Anthropic to an 11% adjusted operating margin and its second consecutive quarter of adjusted profit.
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SemiAnalysis saw the turn coming. On July 8, the research firm forecast that Anthropic’s third-quarter profit would exceed $1 billion. The margin has strengthened. Revenue growth has not kept the same pace.
Investors Trim $100 Billion Hopes as Anthropic Paces $74 Billion
Anthropic’s revenue more than doubled between the first and second quarters but increased 45% in the third quarter. The slowdown fell short of expectations among some investors, who had projected over the summer that annualized revenue would exceed $100 billion by year-end, the FT said in its Wednesday report.
Anthropic’s improving profitability comes as investors weigh whether the company can sustain the revenue growth needed to support its infrastructure commitments.
SemiAnalysis estimated that Anthropic reached an annualized revenue run rate of roughly $74 billion in the third quarter, according to the Wednesday FT report. SemiAnalysis analyst Joey Brookhart said investors had lowered their forecasts over the past three months as major customers, including Meta, increasingly relied on their own AI tools.
That caution contrasts with projections shared at Anthropic’s Wednesday investor meeting. Investors attending the meeting projected that the company could reach $110 billion in annualized revenue by year-end, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The stakes extend beyond Anthropic’s valuation. The company has committed to at least $518 billion in infrastructure spending over the next decade, largely through agreements with Google, Amazon and Microsoft, Reuters reported Sept. 29. Roughly 80% of those commitments cannot be canceled. The obligations leave Anthropic dependent on sustained revenue growth even as its computing costs become more manageable.
Anthropic projects revenue of $190 billion to $200 billion by 2028, Reuters reported Aug. 14. Reaching that level would require the company to maintain rapid growth while supporting its infrastructure commitments.
Anthropic plans to begin formally marketing its IPO the week of Nov. 9, with trading expected to begin before Thanksgiving, Bloomberg reported Oct. 1.
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