Anthropic Lost $80.7 Billion in Six Months. Most of It Was Never Spent.

Anthropic reports $16.3 billion in first-half revenue as the Claude maker seeks a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT.

Anthropic made $16.3 billion in six months and lost $80.7 billion. That pair of numbers sent a Monday post from @KobeissiLetter racing across X.

Both numbers are real, and both come from the company's own paperwork. Anthropic, the San Francisco maker of the Claude AI models, announced Monday that it had filed an S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its Class A stock would trade on the Nasdaq as ANT. X's own counts put The Kobeissi Letter's post at 435,192 views on Monday. The loss is the figure that needs a footnote.

Most of that $80.7 billion is bookkeeping. The filing counts $72.4 billion of it as non-cash changes in the fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs, The VC Corner reported, citing page 23. The notes rose in value because Anthropic's own valuation rose, The Next Web reported. So on paper, getting more valuable looks like losing money.

The business underneath looks different. In the second quarter alone, revenue reached $11.56 billion and operating income hit $974 million, according to The VC Corner. None of the five earlier quarters in the S-1 turned an operating profit, The VC Corner noted. One quarter brought in more than double the $5.0 billion the company made in its entire history through 2025, by that newsletter's own math.

Across the whole half, Anthropic still ran a $693 million operating loss, The Next Web reported. The company's preferred yardstick tells a sunnier story. An adjusted measure that strips out stock pay, non-cash charitable gifts and a legal settlement shows $1.6 billion in operating income, a 10% margin. That figure is Anthropic's, built on Anthropic's own definition.

Another figure points the other way. By Anthropic's own estimate, somewhere between 5% and 7% of its revenue over the nine months ending Sept. 30 was paid by customers who violated its usage policy or terms, The Next Web reported. The rule-breakers were paying customers too.

The money already has somewhere to go. Anthropic has committed to Google for at least $114.5 billion in long-term computing and to Amazon for at least $110 billion, according to The Next Web. The grand total for that spending is blank.

The prospectus leaves the share price and share count blank too. People familiar with the plans told The Wall Street Journal that Anthropic is aiming for the week of Nov. 16, though that could change, according to The Next Web. Those people said the listing could raise $100 billion or more, at a valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.

Whatever the price, a buyer of ANT gets one vote per Class A share. The S-1 describes "a novel capital and corporate governance structure." In it, a single Class F share held by an LLC of the seven co-founders carries 50.1% of the voting power on ordinary matters, and a trust elects most of the board. That Class F share, the S-1 says, "will not have any economic rights." It doesn't need any.

Source: X, retrieved October 26, 2026. Other sources: anthropic.com, the SEC, thevccorner.com, thenextweb.com, the SEC (2).