Anthropic Posts Over 100 Trillion Won in Loss Despite 21.6 Trillion Won in H1 Revenue

Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) company that is getting ready to sell shares to the public for the first time, reportedly lost more than 100 trillion won in the first half of this year, even though its revenue grew by 1,500 percent.

The U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal reported these figures after obtaining Anthropic's company registration document, called Form S-1. Anthropic earned $16.3 billion (about 21.6 trillion won) in revenue during the first half of this year. That was 15 times the $1.1 billion it earned during the same period last year.

However, despite this record growth in revenue, Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion (about 107 trillion won) during the same six months.

This loss was almost twice the $42 billion the company lost over the whole of last year.

The newspaper explained that about $72 billion of the loss came from changes in the recorded value of financial products, including convertible bonds (CBs) that Anthropic issued to raise money. These changes created losses on paper and do not necessarily mean the company paid out that amount in cash.

A major reason for Anthropic's rapid growth is the huge amount of money it spends on computing power and infrastructure.

During the first half of this year alone, Anthropic spent $9 billion (about 11.9 trillion won) to secure computing power and build infrastructure. This was already more than the $7.3 billion it spent during all of last year.

The company has also committed to spending an enormous $450 billion (about 596.7 trillion won) on computing resources in the future.

Over the next 7 to 10 years, Anthropic must make payments under binding contracts for computing resources that it cannot cancel. These payments include $111 billion to Google Cloud, $110 billion to Amazon Web Services (AWS), and $31 billion to Microsoft (MS).

When leases for Google chips through Broadcom, worth more than $160 billion, and contracts with smaller cloud providers are added, future infrastructure costs exceed $600 billion.

Including additional deals that the company is still negotiating, the total cost of securing computing power could reach $750 billion (995 trillion won).

Anthropic currently gets most of its computing power from the three largest cloud providers. But these companies increasingly see Anthropic as a competitor, making it harder for Anthropic to secure enough computing capacity. To deal with this problem, Anthropic is building its own data centers.

Anthropic said that two customers provided about one-fifth of its revenue. It expects a large share of its revenue to continue coming from a small number of customers for the time being.

The company also described possible risks from its technology. It said AI models might develop behaviors aimed at stopping people from shutting them down. They might also give responses that resemble blackmail against humans. These behaviors could create a risk that AI systems become difficult to control.

Other risks include damage caused by serious AI-related accidents and public opposition to data centers.

The company also revealed how much its top executives were paid.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dario Amodei and his sister, President Daniela Amodei, each received a base salary of $655,000 (about 870 million won) last year. Including stock awards, Dario Amodei received total compensation of $18 million (about 23.9 billion won), while Daniela Amodei received $16.5 million (about 21.9 billion won).

The Wall Street Journal said their total compensation was around the middle of the range for CEOs at S&P 500 companies and somewhat lower than the pay of top executives at major technology companies.

Anthropic's co-founders have promised to donate 80 percent of the company shares they personally own to charitable causes.

The company has also previously announced that it will contribute 5 percent of its total shares to a fund set up to support the public good.