Anthropic PBC told prospective investors its third-quarter revenue hit $16.8 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, as the artificial intelligence company pushes ahead with plans to go public.
The firm behind Claude told investors it had achieved profitability in the quarter on an adjusted basis in a presentation Wednesday at its San Francisco headquarters, the people said.
Anthropic is generating positive free cash flow, had gross margin of 85% and an over 11% positive adjusted operating margin as of the third quarter, according to the people.
The company is set to begin formally marketing its initial public offering as soon as the week of Nov. 9, putting it in line to begin trading before the US Thanksgiving holiday, people familiar with the matter said earlier this month. It's expected to make its debut no later than the end of the year.
Investors' reactions to Anthropic's update will be critical to the IPO process, with some indicating prior to Wednesday's meeting that a fair valuation for the company is in the $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion ballpark. The company expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's IPO in June, people familiar have said.
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Anthropic's third quarter revenue marked about a 12-fold increase versus the previous year. Still, the rate of growth from the second quarter slowed to around 45%, compared to a more than 140% increase in the previous quarter — a fact some analysts pointed to as raising questions about current lofty AI valuations.
"The slowdown from the second quarter shifts the focus from headline revenue to revenue quality, margins and whether Anthropic's massive compute commitments can generate adequate returns," said Gary Tan, portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments. It also raises the bar for the AI trade "as investors increasingly demand evidence that compute spending can translate into sustainable profits."
The company's net revenue retention, a measure of its ability to keep its existing customers and increase their spending over time, was 900%, some of the people familiar with the update said. Its compute margin, or the revenue left over after subtracting the cost of its computing power and other necessary infrastructure, is more than 40%, some people said.
Deliberations are ongoing and details of the IPO could change, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn't public. The Financial Times reported some of the figures earlier Wednesday. A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment.
Anthropic, ascendant for much of this year, now faces renewed competition from OpenAI, which is neck and neck with its rival in the race for a higher valuation. The companies are also at the center of mounting public scrutiny over AI safety after a string of high-profile hacking incidents by rogue agents, ramping up concern about the potential impact on Anthropic's IPO.
"I am cautious about Anthropic's revenue outlook," said Jung In Yun, chief executive officer at Fibonacci Asset Management. "Pricing could fall further as competition intensifies, so even strong usage growth may not translate into equally strong revenue growth or sustainable profitability."
Meta Platforms Inc. added to the competitors for investors to monitor after it released an AI model that the company says is a big leap over its own predecessors. Muse Wonder's capabilities put it on par with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude when it comes to coding, or working through financial or legal questions, according to Meta.
Anthropic had a net loss of almost $42 billion in 2025, a roughly fivefold increase from about $8.3 billion the year before, Bloomberg News reported in August. The company's full-year revenue was roughly $4.6 billion for 2025, up markedly from $386 million in 2024, though its operating loss ballooned to more than $8 billion, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News.
"This news is somewhat negative," said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co. "It's something that will likely raise some concerns in investors' minds. We also have problems in the credit market surrounding the tech sector in the US. We have already seen the CDS prices for the hyperscalers rise significantly in recent weeks."
In a sign of growing unease over the pace of spending in the industry, cloud-computing provider CoreWeave Inc.'s shares plunged as much as 17% on Wednesday. Its debt due in 2032, which investors bought at par four months ago, traded at less than 78 cents on the dollar. Credit-default swaps on the company are pricing in a more than 50% chance of default within the next five years.
Powering ahead with an IPO would see Anthropic defy a string of delays and postponements in the market for new listings globally. Data center operator AirTrunk delayed the IPO of a real estate investment trust in Singapore until next year, days after a planned IPO for Australian data center company Firmus collapsed.
A range of other companies have seen their targeted timelines slip as the performance for this year's class of IPOs stumbled. When removing SpaceX and SK Hynix Inc.'s record-setting US listings, the weighted-average return for the more than 100 newly listed stocks is a loss of 9.7%, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The figure sharply lags a 14% return for the S&P 500 Index and a 19% gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 this year.
"Over the last couple of quarters, AI has become a victim of its own success," said Anna Wu, an investment strategist and founder of Floodlines Research. "The market no longer reacts to good earnings, but it reacts to the slightest slip. Anthropic's numbers are good in investors' eyes, and I'm pretty sure they will subscribe to the IPO. What it won't do is lift the entire sector the way it would have a year or two ago, because investors are now taking good news for granted."
Protestors and Investors
Less than a dozen protesters were gathered at the entrance of Anthropic's Howard St. headquarters in San Francisco as investors and employees arrived on Wednesday morning. Several of them held a sign that said "Block the IPO."
Crystal Zermeño of California Common Good, an activist group focused on holding corporations accountable, said she's concerned about Anthropic's meteoric rise and the risks its shares could pose for pension funds.
"We have to really think strategically about where this is taking us," Zermeño said.
Alfred Lin, a Sequoia Capital partner, and Brad Gerstner, founder and chief executive officer of Altimeter Capital Management, were among the investors seen entering the building.
Most of the people exiting Anthropic's office after the event were tight-lipped about the presentation, declining to comment on its contents.