What Anthropic's IPO filing says about revenue, net loss and investor valuations

Anthropic lost $693 million from its regular business operations in the first half of 2026. But its total net loss for those six months was $80.7 billion. The first number measures the costs of building and selling AI products compared with the money they bring in. The second includes other items that are not part of everyday business operations. This big difference shows why Anthropic's financial numbers in its IPO filing need to be read carefully.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by researchers who left OpenAI after disagreements about how the company should be governed and how AI safety should be handled. Anthropic develops the Claude AI models. It has now shared its financial records with people who may buy shares when it becomes a public company. Reuters reports that the company is expected to go public before Thanksgiving. No exact date has been confirmed.

The filing comes during a period when several companies are preparing to sell shares to the public at very high valuations. SpaceX set the price for its $75 billion IPO in June, valuing the company at $1.75 trillion. OpenAI also filed confidentially that month. Reuters reports that OpenAI is expected to go public by early 2027. This means Anthropic and the company its founders left are moving toward the public stock market on separate paths.

A prospectus is a document a company files before selling shares to the public. It explains the company's financial results, the risks its leaders see and the terms of the share sale. Anthropic's prospectus covers its revenue and quarterly growth, its operating and net losses, and the cost of the computing power its AI models need. It also explains how much the company depends on a few cloud providers, warns about how its AI models might behave, and names the banks helping manage the share sale.

The 10 slides below explain selected numbers from the prospectus and related reporting. Each number covers the exact period stated in the filing, whether that is the first half of 2026 or the three months ending June 30. Some valuations come from current and potential investors. These are their opinions about the company's value, not statements made by Anthropic itself. Each slide explains what its number measures and what it does not include.

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Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion for the first half of 2026 in its IPO prospectus. Reuters reports that most of this loss came from an increase in the estimated value of bonds that can be exchanged for Anthropic shares.

Net loss is the final result after all items on the income statement have been counted, including financing costs and changes in the value of financial assets or debts. The $80.7 billion figure does not show how much more Anthropic spent building and running its AI models than it earned from them.

Changes in the value of convertible debt are one type of item included in net loss. A convertible bond is a loan that the person or company holding it can exchange for shares in the company that borrowed the money. The holder receives the usual terms of a loan and also has the option to become a shareholder.

Some companies record these bonds at fair value. This means they estimate what the bonds are worth again at the end of each reporting period. The updated amount reflects their value at that time, not the amount originally borrowed.

For the company that issues the bonds, they count as a debt. When their fair value rises, the amount of the debt recorded in the accounts also rises. That increase is recorded as a loss on the income statement. This is an accounting adjustment, not a cost of running the business. The company does not have to pay out cash when it records this loss.

The option to exchange the bonds for shares connects their value to the company's share value. When the shares that bondholders could receive become more valuable, the option to exchange the bonds for shares becomes more valuable too. This can increase the bonds' fair value and the loss the company reports.

Reuters says this change in fair value caused most, but not all, of Anthropic's loss in the first half of the year. The remaining loss comes from other items, including the costs of running the business. The company's operating results show how the business itself performed over those same six months.

Illustration: Quartz

Anthropic earned about $16.3 billion in revenue during the first half of 2026, according to its IPO prospectus, as reported by Reuters. This is the company's total revenue for the six months from January through June.

Reuters describes the six-month total as an estimate, not an exact figure. Any comparison using it should keep the word "about" to show that it is approximate.

Revenue is the money a company records from selling its products or services before taking away any costs. The other figures in Anthropic's income statement start with this amount, including the costs of running the business and the final profit or loss.

The period covered matters as much as the amount. This figure covers six months. It is not the revenue for one quarter or for the most recent 12 months.

The quarterly figures in the same filing cover shorter periods. They should not be used in place of the six-month total, and the six-month total should not be treated as if it were revenue for a single quarter.

For investors considering the share sale, this is one of the basic sales figures in the prospectus, available before Anthropic's shares begin trading.

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Anthropic's revenue grew by 1,368% compared with the same quarter a year earlier, according to its IPO prospectus. The figure covers the three months ending June 30, not the whole first half of 2026.

A year-over-year growth rate compares a quarter with the same three months in the previous year. This helps avoid seasonal changes that can make comparisons between back-to-back quarters misleading. But the figure also has limits. The 1,368% rate describes just one period. By itself, it does not show the pattern of growth in the quarters before or after it.

Such a high growth rate suggests that the starting amount was small. Revenue in the comparison quarter was only a fraction of the amount earned in the June quarter. This starting point matters when reading the percentage. As revenue grows, each future year-over-year comparison uses a larger starting amount. The same increase in dollars will then produce a smaller percentage increase.

The prospectus also includes warnings from the company. Anthropic says its growth rate could fall and could change from one period to another. These warnings appear in the same filing as the June-quarter result. They make clear that a high growth rate in the past does not guarantee the same growth in the future.

A growth rate measures sales, not profit. It shows how much more money the company brought in, but not how much it spent to earn that money. The filing reports costs and losses separately.

Claude Code, Anthropic's AI tool for helping people write software, has been credited as a major reason for the company's revenue growth. This points to software developers as one source of the increased demand.

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Anthropic earned $11.6 billion in revenue in the three months ending June 30, according to its IPO prospectus. Reuters reports that revenue in the previous quarter was $4.73 billion.

These figures let us compare two quarters in a row. Each covers three months, and one period comes immediately before the other. This is different from a year-over-year comparison, which compares a quarter with the same three months 12 months earlier. Looking at consecutive quarters shows how sales changed over the most recent three-month period, rather than over a full year.

Revenue is the first main figure in a company's financial results. It counts the money customers paid before any costs are taken away. The $11.6 billion figure alone does not show whether Anthropic made a profit. The prospectus reports the company's losses for the same quarter separately. Those losses depend on expenses and accounting items that revenue does not include.

Two quarters in a row also provide only a short record. They show how much quarterly revenue changed from one period to the next. They do not explain what caused the change or whether the same pace will continue in future quarters.

Growing demand has also tested the company's ability to keep up. Anthropic said that demand for Claude from businesses and software developers put unavoidable pressure on its infrastructure. A sharp rise in consumer use added to that pressure.

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Anthropic reported a net loss of $66.3 billion for the three months ending June 30, according to its IPO prospectus. Reuters reports that this was higher than the $14.4 billion loss in the comparison period.

Reuters does not say which earlier period the $14.4 billion figure covers. Even so, the comparison shows that the quarterly net loss increased.

Net loss is the final result on a company's income statement. It includes the costs of running the business and items that are not part of everyday operations. A quarterly net loss of this size does not, by itself, show how much Anthropic spent building and selling its Claude AI models.

The three months ending June 30 are part of the first half of 2026. This quarter's result is therefore included in the company's net loss for the full six-month period, rather than being a separate total. Comparing these two numbers means comparing part of a period with the whole period, not comparing two separate periods.

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Anthropic reported an operating loss of $693 million for the first six months of 2026, according to its IPO prospectus. In the same six months a year earlier, its operating loss was $2.1 billion.

The loss in 2026 was smaller than the loss in 2025. Both numbers cover the first half of their respective years, so the comparison uses the same length of time.

An operating loss is the amount left when a company's operating costs are greater than its revenue. It does not include financing items recorded below the operating line. This makes it a more direct measure of how the main business of building and selling AI models performed.

The prospectus also points to the biggest cost affecting this result. Anthropic expects its spending on computing power and infrastructure to keep rising in total dollars. It also expects these costs to remain its largest operating expense.

Rising spending in total dollars means the company will spend more money overall. It does not tell us whether spending will grow faster or slower than revenue as a share of sales. Reuters' report does not give a dollar amount for these costs in the first half of the year.

Computing power and infrastructure are included in operating expenses. Any increase in these costs directly affects the operating result measured by the $693 million figure. Future operating losses will depend on how revenue changes compared with these rising costs.

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Some current and potential investors value Anthropic at $1.5 trillion, according to Reuters. This is their estimate of the company's worth. Anthropic has not announced this figure as its own valuation.

The estimate is lower than it was a week earlier. At that time, these investors valued Anthropic at about $2 trillion, Reuters reports.

The change came after an event for investors where Anthropic shared some of its financial information. Reuters reports that the lower estimate came after this disclosure. The report does not say which details investors considered or why they changed their views.

The estimates come from two groups in different positions. Current investors already own part of Anthropic. Potential investors are deciding whether to buy a stake. Their estimates show how these investors value the company before it goes public.

Neither figure is a share price or a market capitalization. When Reuters reported these estimates on October 26, Anthropic's shares had not started trading on a public stock exchange. Market capitalization is the total value of a company's publicly traded shares, based on the current share price. Once shares trade publicly, buyers and sellers determine that price each trading day.

The two estimates were made about a week apart. Both were formed before Anthropic's shares became available on public markets.

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Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in a private funding round in May, according to Reuters, which reviewed the company's IPO prospectus. This value came from a private deal, not from shares being traded on a stock exchange.

A valuation in a funding round reflects the price that a group of investors agrees to pay for a stake in the company in that particular deal. The company and its investors negotiate the price privately. A public-market valuation works differently. Once shares are listed, their price changes with each trade, and any buyer or seller can take part.

The May figure is the latest privately agreed valuation for Anthropic described in the report. It was set months before the prospectus became public. It is different from the later estimates made by some current and potential investors. Those estimates are the investors' opinions, not a valuation that Anthropic set or confirmed.

The $965 billion figure represents the value of the entire company. It does not show how much money Anthropic raised in the May funding round. Reuters does not report the amount raised, the names of the investors who took part or the price per share in the deal.

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Anthropic's prospectus says the company depends on a small number of cloud service providers. Reuters names three: Amazon $AMZN -0.95%, Google $GOOGL -1.24% and Microsoft $MSFT +0.66%.

The filing identifies this dependence as a business risk. It says these arrangements create "dependencies and potential vulnerabilities."

A cloud provider rents computing power from its own data centers. AI companies use this computing power to train their models and run them when customers make requests.

The prospectus also describes other outside suppliers that Anthropic depends on. Reuters reports that these include Broadcom $AVGO, a semiconductor company. The filing puts these supplier relationships under the same warning about dependence and possible weaknesses that it applies to cloud providers.

A prospectus's risk section explains things that could harm the company or its shares. Anthropic's list of risks also covers its own technology.

The prospectus warns that its models could show "self-preserving behaviors." One example it gives is behavior "resembling blackmail."

Another warning concerns the answers and other content the models produce. The filing says these outputs "could be interpreted as coercive, deceptive, or manipulative."

These warnings point to two different sources of risk. One comes from the outside companies that provide computing power and parts. The other comes from the way Anthropic's AI models might behave.