The loss and trillion-dollar compute appetite torch IPO hype as valuation hopes sink.
Anthropic has reported a net loss of more than US$80 billion (A$114bn) in the first half of the year and signalled it could spend as much as US$750bn ($A1.1 trillion) in the coming years to secure more computing capacity, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The loss, up from US$13bn (A$19bn) a year earlier, was driven by US$72bn (A$103bn) in accounting charges tied to changes in the value of financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise money, the report said on Tuesday, citing a draft prospectus for its IPO.
The figures show the hefty costs of the AI race, even as investors look harder at whether the money companies are pouring into chips and data centres will pay off.
Anthropic’s revenue jumped to US$16.3 bn (A$23.3bn) in the six months ended June 30 from US$1.1bn (A$1.6bn) a year ago, while AI infrastructure spending nearly quadrupled to almost US$9bn (A$13bn), the Journal said.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment and Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Reuters reported first in September that Anthropic posted a net loss of US$42bn (A$60bn) in 2025, as part of a series of exclusives from its IPO prospectus.
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The company has benefited from the popularity of Claude Code, its coding assistant that developers use to write software and build apps.
Lower valuation
But some current investors and prospective investors who attended Anthropic’s investor day last week are weighing a lower valuation for the AI company after its latest financial disclosures, four people familiar with the matter had told Reuters.
The investors who attended the event in San Francisco discussed a valuation of around US$1.5 trillion (A$2.1T), three of the people had said, a significant step down from the roughly US$2 trillion (A$2.9T) valuation previously expected for the November share sale.
Anthropic told investors at the meeting that its third-quarter revenue jumped 45% to US$16.8bn (A$24bn) from the previous quarter, and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis during the quarter.
A cooler reception for Anthropic’s IPO could weigh on the wider AI market, whose near-term prospects investors see as hinging largely on the share sale’s success, ahead of rival OpenAI’s potential listing next year.
AAP/Reuters