Anthropic reports 45% growth and $16.8 billion in Q3 revenue — but the numbers are unverified
The company behind Claude told a room of investors on Wednesday that third-quarter revenue rose roughly 45% to $16.8 billion. But the figures are the company's own statements relayed by anonymous sources, key concepts like gross versus net revenue and "adjusted profitability" are undefined, and the detail that distillation tied to rival labs was materially reduced hints at how much needs cleaning up before a potentially record-breaking IPO.
What happened on Wednesday
Anthropic leadership met Wednesday with a room full of potential IPO investors and said that third-quarter revenue had risen roughly 45% from the previous quarter, to $16.8 billion. That is according to The New York Times, which cites two people with knowledge of the presentation (NYT).
The meeting carries special significance: Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, filed to go public in June but has yet to make its prospectus — the document laying out its financial trajectory — public. Wednesday was therefore the first official opportunity for potential IPO investors to get a look at the numbers, according to the NYT.
The scale of the listing is large: bankers have said, per the NYT, that the company could aim to raise more than $100 billion in an IPO, which could value Anthropic at $2 trillion. That would push the company past Elon Musk's SpaceX — which was listed in June at a valuation of $1.77 trillion — as the world's largest offering. But both the size of the raise, the valuation and the timing (the NYT describes a listing "as soon as next month") are expectations, not confirmed filings.
The numbers in sequence
Laid out quarter by quarter, the trajectory looks like this:
- Q1 (January–March): roughly $4.8 billion
- Q2 (April–June): $11.5 billion according to the Financial Times, summarized by Simon Willison (Willison); $11.6 billion according to the NYT (NYT). The sources are not in agreement, and the discrepancy has not been resolved.
- Q3 (July–September): $16.8 billion
The growth rate is described differently as well: the NYT and Business Insider say roughly 45% quarter over quarter, while the FT headline (via Willison) says "closer to 50 percent." Both are approximations of the same change.
Two figures from the FT reporting, available via Willison's summary, say something about the business model: in the third quarter, each dollar spent on compute generated $1.70 in revenue, and adjusted operating margins — which exclude stock-based compensation — were 11%. It should be emphasized that the FT article itself is behind a paywall, and that these details therefore have a single source chain via Willison's summary.
The company's claims under scrutiny
Anthropic told investors, according to the NYT, that the company was profitable "after certain adjustments" — something the NYT itself notes is not a bottom-line figure. The company also cited an 85% gross margin, defined as revenue minus the direct costs of generating that revenue, after certain adjustments.
These are the company's own claims, relayed by anonymous attendees at a closed meeting — not audited financial results. Which adjustments are included has not been disclosed.
The accounting question: gross or net?
Business Insider points to the most fundamental gap: it is unclear whether the new revenue figure counts gross or net revenue, or how Anthropic arrived at its definition of profitability (Business Insider). An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment.
The detail is not marginal. Business Insider notes that Anthropic has historically booked gross sales through cloud partners as revenue — a practice that can produce higher figures than the net settlement the company itself ends up with. For investors set to value a company at up to $2 trillion, the difference between gross and net in such a number is decisive. The prospectus, when it arrives, must answer this.
The distillation detail
Perhaps the most revealing detail from Wednesday's meeting concerns so-called distillation from rival labs. Anthropic told investors, according to the Financial Times, that distillation accounted for 5 to 7% of revenue, and that the company had cut it back "materially" in the third quarter, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter (via Willison).
That the company itself highlights this share — and that it was reduced right before the listing — says something about the kind of revenue quality the company wants to present when the prospectus becomes public. The underlying figures, however, come solely from the FT via the source chain above and have not been independently confirmed.
The market is watching the growth curve
The analysts are also looking at more than the level. Harrison Rolfes, an analyst covering private companies at PitchBook, points out that quarter-over-quarter growth is flattening. "They're still growing, but not as quickly. So they're heading into this inflection point," he says, according to Business Insider (Business Insider). Such an inflection point could, according to Rolfes, affect the valuation.
Commentary of the opinion genre also exists: The Motley Fool describes the quarterly figure as a run-rate of roughly $67 billion annually and argues that it supports a valuation of around $2 trillion, at roughly 30 times run-rate revenue (Motley Fool). This is commentary and speculation from a secondary source, not AIMag's own assessment — and such multiples depend entirely on which revenue figure ultimately holds up in an audited financial statement.
What remains to be seen
The concrete, known picture after Wednesday is this: a company claiming $16.8 billion in third-quarter revenue, 45% growth from the previous quarter, an 85% adjusted gross margin and profitability after its own adjustments — presented to investors ahead of a listing that could be the largest in history.
Almost everything else is uncertain. Every single number is the company's own account relayed by anonymous sources. It is unclear whether the revenue is gross or net, which adjustments the profitability figure rests on, and what the revenue mix looks like. There is still no public prospectus. Both the valuation of up to $2 trillion and the timing — "as soon as next month" — are expectations from bankers and sources, not confirmed documents.
When the prospectus is released, what counts is: the definition of revenue, the accounting behind the adjusted figures, and how much of the growth is actually Anthropic's own customers rather than relayed model usage. Wednesday's meeting gave investors a first glimpse — not the full financial statement.