Accounting Charges Drove Anthropic’s $80.7B Half-Year Loss
Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion for the six months ending 30 June 2026. Of that amount, $72 billion came from accounting charges linked to changes in the value of convertible notes and other financial tools the company issued to raise money. The Wall Street Journal reported these figures on 20 October 2026, based on a draft document prepared for Anthropic's planned initial public offering (IPO) that the newspaper reviewed. Anthropic declined to comment.
According to the draft document, as reported by the Journal, Anthropic earned about $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, up from $1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier. It spent nearly $9 billion on computing power and infrastructure. The following sections explain the reported financial figures, future computing commitments, risks, and how these details relate to news about the company's planned IPO this month.
The key point: The Journal's figures show two different sides of Anthropic's business in the first half of 2026. The company reported an $80.7 billion net loss, including $72 billion in accounting charges linked to its financing arrangements. At the same time, its operating business brought in about $16.3 billion in revenue and spent nearly $9 billion on computing.
What the Draft Prospectus Shows
The Journal said the net loss of more than $80 billion was mainly caused by an accounting adjustment linked to financing agreements. Anthropic's net loss was $13 billion in the same period a year earlier. For all of 2025, the company lost $42 billion, the Journal reported.
The Journal also reported that Anthropic spent nearly $9 billion on computing power and infrastructure during the first six months of 2026, up from $2.3 billion in the same period of 2025. The first-half spending was already higher than the $7.3 billion it spent throughout 2025. That year, the company earned $4.6 billion in revenue.
The Computing Bill
The Journal reported that Anthropic has agreed to pay about $450 billion under cloud computing contracts over the next seven to ten years. Most of these agreements cannot be canceled. According to the Journal, Anthropic plans to spend $111 billion on Google cloud computing, $110 billion on Amazon Web Services, and $31 billion on Microsoft services. The company must make these payments regardless of how much computing power it actually uses.
The Journal said Anthropic also agreed to spend up to $86 billion to rent Nvidia chips from Nscale and Lambda, with the agreements running through 2033 and 2034, respectively. The company has also committed more than $160 billion to leasing Google chips through a deal with Broadcom. Including that deal, the Journal reported that Anthropic's future infrastructure costs exceed $600 billion. Additional agreements being discussed could increase its commitments by as much as $150 billion.
Anthropic has indicated that it could spend $750 billion on additional computing power in the coming years, including agreements it is still negotiating, the Journal reported. According to the draft prospectus, Anthropic said it had tried to secure more computing capacity than its partners were willing to provide. The company also said those partners increasingly see Anthropic as a competitor.
Customers and Risk Factors
About one-fifth of Anthropic's $16.3 billion in first-half revenue came from just two customers, the Journal reported. Anthropic expects a large share of its revenue to continue coming from a small number of customers for the foreseeable future, according to its draft prospectus.
The Journal reported that about one-third of the draft prospectus discusses risks. Anthropic warned that damage caused by a catastrophic AI-related incident could be so severe that the company might not be able to obtain insurance to cover the possible losses.
Anthropic also pointed to growing political opposition to data centers. According to the Journal, the company said this opposition had become more organized and coordinated across different areas. Anthropic added that some companies operating facilities on its behalf had limited operating experience. Their facilities might therefore be less reliable than those run by large cloud providers.
Pay and Pledges
Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei each received a base salary of about $655,000 in 2025, the Journal reported. Dario's stock and stock-option awards brought his total compensation to about $18 million. Daniela's total compensation was about $16.5 million. According to the draft prospectus as reported by the Journal, both co-founders pledged to give 80% of their personal Anthropic shares to charitable causes.
How This Fits With Earlier Reports
This report adds to our coverage from earlier in October. On 4 October, we covered a news report about Reuters' coverage of Anthropic's confidential prospectus. That report put the company's computing commitments at least $518 billion over ten years, with about 80% of the commitments either impossible to cancel or payable regardless of usage. On 15 October, we covered investors considering a $1.5 trillion value for Anthropic's planned IPO. Reuters reported that Anthropic had told potential IPO investors its third-quarter revenue rose 45% from the previous quarter, reaching $16.8 billion.
On 18 October, we covered Anthropic's plan to pledge 5% of its shares to a Public Benefit Fund, which requires shareholder approval. On 19 October, we covered talks about a second $45 billion deal with Nscale. Bloomberg reported that the deal was not final. We also covered OpenAI's effort to raise $30 billion at a value above $1.4 trillion. Reuters reported that OpenAI was racing to secure the funding before Anthropic's expected stock-market debut in mid-November.
The Bigger Picture
In our view, the difference between revenue and computing costs is an important figure for IPO investors to examine. The Journal reported that Anthropic earned about $16.3 billion and spent nearly $9 billion on computing in the first half of 2026. For all of 2025, the company earned $4.6 billion and spent $7.3 billion on computing.
In our view, the company's long-term commitments are a major source of risk. The Journal reported about $450 billion in cloud agreements, most of which cannot be canceled, and more than $600 billion in total future infrastructure costs when the Broadcom chip lease is included. The company could take on up to another $150 billion in commitments through deals still being discussed.
In our view, the risks described by the Journal also point to several challenges: two customers provide one-fifth of revenue, cloud partners increasingly see Anthropic as a competitor, and opposition to data centers is becoming more organized.
Anthropic's draft prospectus, as reported by The Wall Street Journal on 20 October 2026
"limited number of customers for the foreseeable future"
Three Important Points
$72B OF THE LOSS The Journal reported that $72 billion of Anthropic's $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of 2026 came from accounting charges linked to convertible notes and other financial instruments.
$16.3B REVENUE Anthropic earned about $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, up from $1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to the Journal.
OVER $600B IN COMMITMENTS Anthropic's future infrastructure costs exceed $600 billion when its agreement to lease chips through Broadcom is included, the Journal reported.
The Business Engineer View
This story can be considered alongside the Business Engineer framework The State of The Inference Economy.
The framework explains the economics this way: "Training was a cost center: it happened in separate stages, mainly at about twenty leading AI model labs, and its costs could be spread across trillions of tokens. Inference is a revenue engine: it happens continuously across millions of apps and AI agents, and each query adds another cost."
In our view, the figures from Anthropic's draft prospectus, as reported by the Journal, offer a way to test this idea against one company's results. Computing spending rose alongside revenue in the first half of 2026, while the company's computing commitments extend many years into the future. The framework was published in March 2026 and does not discuss Anthropic's prospectus.
What Has Not Been Confirmed
We have read the Journal's report, not Anthropic's draft prospectus itself. As far as we could check, the draft was not publicly available through the SEC's EDGAR system. The figures could change before the final filing. The roughly $450 billion in cloud agreements and the total of more than $600 billion reported by the Journal may not be calculated in the same way as the $518 billion in Reuters' earlier report. We have not seen the details behind either total. The Journal did not identify the two customers that account for one-fifth of Anthropic's revenue.
The Bottom Line
The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic's draft prospectus shows about $16.3 billion in revenue during the first half of 2026, nearly $9 billion in computing costs, and an $80.7 billion net loss. Of that loss, $72 billion came from accounting charges linked to the company's financing arrangements. In our view, IPO investors will need to weigh the company's operating results and its large future computing commitments, rather than focus only on the headline loss.
A note on sources: This article is based on The Wall Street Journal's report of 20 October 2026 about Anthropic's draft IPO prospectus, which we read in full. We have not seen the draft document itself. Earlier figures come from our own articles citing Reuters, Bloomberg, and Anthropic. The chart shows figures reported by the Journal for the six months ending 30 June 2026. This article is not financial or investment advice.