Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic reports $16.8bn Q3 revenue before planned IPO
Anthropic told investors third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion and adjusted profitability improved, but slower growth, distillation revenue and softer IPO sentiment left its November listing plans under pressure.
- Anthropic shared its quarterly numbers with potential investors at a private meeting in San Francisco, according to multiple US media reports.
- The company said third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, about 45 per cent above the second quarter and more than 3.6 times its total 2025 annual revenue.
- The Information said Anthropic's adjusted operating margin for the year through Q3 was 11 per cent, and the Financial Times said this was its second straight quarter of adjusted profitability.
- Anthropic estimated that 5 to 7 per cent of its revenue came from distillation and told investors that this revenue would probably fall in the current quarter.
- The Information said the IPO was planned for November before Thanksgiving, while the article said some investors now expected a valuation below $1.5 trillion after bankers had floated $2 trillion.
Anthropic shared its quarterly figures with potential investors at a private meeting in San Francisco, according to multiple US media reports. It said third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, which the article described as about 45 per cent above the previous quarter and more than 3.6 times its 2025 annual revenue.
The article said growth had slowed after the second quarter, when demand for Claude Code had pushed revenue up by more than 140 per cent from the first quarter. It said a summer slowdown may have played a part, and that OpenAI launched Astra in September before Anthropic responded with Opus 5.5 later that month.
According to The Information, Anthropic reported an adjusted operating margin of 11 per cent for the year through Q3. The Financial Times said that was the company's second quarter in a row with adjusted profitability, and the article added that revenue was $1.70 for every dollar spent on compute.
Anthropic estimated that 5 to 7 per cent of revenue came from distillation, where other firms use its systems to extract training data. It told investors that this source of income would probably decline in the current quarter.
The Information said the IPO was planned for November before Thanksgiving. The article said some investors now expected a valuation below $1.5 trillion, after bankers had floated $2 trillion, and noted that the reported July annualised rate was $65 billion.
Named in this story
Companies
- Anthropic
- shared its third-quarter figures and is preparing a November IPO
- OpenAI
- launched a competing product in September
Products and systems
- Claude Code
- developer tool that drove second-quarter revenue growth
- Astra
- the competitor OpenAI launched in September
- Opus 5.5
- Anthropic release used to counter Astra in late September
- Claude
- Anthropic model family cited in the distillation discussion
Places
- San Francisco
- city where Anthropic held the private investor meeting
How the source tells it
The article mixed straight reporting with investor-briefing hype, using valuation speculation and risk language to frame the IPO as a major market test.
- speculation and suspense building the pricing story from reported investor expectations and banker guesses rather than confirmed terms
- boosterism casting adjusted profitability as evidence that the wider AI sector could make money
- alarm and urgency using loaded market and risk wording to present the IPO backdrop as precarious