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Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows AI vision, surging costs

143 points · 150 comments · 6thbit

  1. simonw · · focus · HN ↗
    I'm confused.

    The numbers that Reuters describe in this article were entirely for 2025.

    It's been well documented that Anthropic's revenue growth in 2026 has been enormous. This was the year of coding agents, and tokenmaxxing, and companies blowing enormous amounts of money on AI thanks to coding agent users spending hundreds (or thousands) of dollars a day.

    Given that, I don't understand why the article and the headline are based exclusively on those 2025 numbers, with not so much as a hint to the reader that there are figures from the past 9 months that aren't covered by the documents Reuters saw.

    Losing $8bn in 2025 isn't particularly notable if you've made ~10x that amount of revenue in 2026.

    (How much did they lose in 2026? Wouldn't we love to know that!)

    Is this just a thing with leaked IPO prospectuses and coverage of them?

    1. snorrah · · focus · HN ↗
      Simon you're really going to need to float the numbers for us if you're going to make claims about enormous revenue. And don't forget to include things like cost of revenue as well !
      1. simonw · · focus · HN ↗
        I assembled some of those numbers in May, when they claimed they had grown from $9bn in annualized revenue in December 2025 to $47bn in early May. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2026&#x2F;May&#x2F;29&#x2F;anthropic&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2026&#x2F;May&#x2F;29&#x2F;anthropic&#x2F;

        Since then they&#x27;ve reported $65bn in annualized revenue by July: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2026&#x2F;Aug&#x2F;23&#x2F;anthropics-best-ai-model-struggles-to-attract-users-as-cheaper-t&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2026&#x2F;Aug&#x2F;23&#x2F;anthropics-best-ai-mod...

        And sure, they might be lying about those figures - but if they are, that&#x27;s investor fraud, and they&#x27;ll be in hot water with the SEC when they try to IPO. I don&#x27;t think they are lying about the figures.

        If I had numbers on their cost of revenue I would share those. As it stands I&#x27;m going to have to wait for either more leaks or their S-1.

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