Anthropic S-1 Draft Shows $16.3B Revenue and an $80.7B Loss

Anthropic’s draft IPO filing shows revenue of $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026 and a net loss of $80.7 billion over the same six months, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed a draft of the company’s S-1 prospectus. The Anthropic S-1 details, reported on Oct. 20 and spreading through markets on Oct. 21, give the first detailed look at the books of a frontier AI lab preparing to go public.

Image: The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, used for illustration. Photo: Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The key numbers in the draft S-1

The figures below come from the Journal’s reporting, as summarized by Reuters, Fortune and Dealroom. Anthropic has not publicly filed the document, and the numbers could change before any final filing.

• Revenue: $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.1 billion in the first half of 2025. Full-year 2025 revenue was $4.6 billion, Fortune reported.
• Net loss: $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with a loss of $13 billion a year earlier, according to Reuters.
• Accounting charges: About $72 billion of the loss came from non-cash charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments Anthropic issued to raise money.
• Compute spending: About $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure in the first half, up from $2.3 billion a year earlier, Fortune reported.
• Future commitments: About $450 billion in mostly noncancelable cloud deals, and plans that could reach $750 billion in compute spending over the coming years.

Why the loss is so large

The headline loss looks enormous, but most of it is an accounting effect rather than cash going out the door. When a company raises money through convertible notes and similar instruments, it has to mark their value to market. As Anthropic’s valuation soared, the value of those instruments rose too, and that increase is recorded as a loss on the income statement. That accounts for roughly $72 billion of the $80.7 billion.

The operating picture is still costly. Dealroom noted that the roughly $9 billion spent on compute in the first half already topped the $7.3 billion spent in all of 2025. Dealroom also reported that Anthropic separately told investors its third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, up 45% from the second quarter, meaning one quarter nearly matched the entire first half.

Risks flagged in the filing

The draft spells out several risks, according to reports on the document:

• Customer concentration: About 20% of first-half revenue came from just two customers.
• Compute access: Anthropic says it struggles to secure enough computing capacity from Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft, which increasingly treat it as a competitor, Dealroom reported. Its noncancelable cloud deals reportedly include about $111 billion with Google, $110 billion with AWS and $31 billion with Microsoft.
• Model misuse: Fortune reported that the filing warns its AI products could be capable of hacking other companies or “blackmail” of customers, and Dealroom said the draft warns a catastrophic AI incident could exceed its insurance coverage.

Fortune also reported that CEO Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei, the company’s president, each received a base salary of $655,000 in 2025, with most pay in stock. His total compensation was valued at $18 million and hers at $16.5 million.

What it means for the Anthropic IPO

Anthropic is preparing to list as soon as November 2026, according to Dealroom, and Fortune reported that the Journal said the company will seek a valuation of about $2 trillion. That would make it one of the largest public debuts on record. Investors will have to weigh very fast revenue growth against the scale of long-term compute bills, much of which must be paid regardless of how much capacity is used.

The report lands in a busy week for AI finance. Rival OpenAI is also targeting an IPO, and SpaceX reported third-quarter results on Oct. 20 showing large gains in its AI computing business. The Boston Report recently covered Anthropic’s pledge of 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund and the tech stock slide tied to AI debt fears, which shows how sensitive markets are to the cost of building AI.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Sources

• The Wall Street Journal: Anthropic draft IPO filing shows red-hot growth, many risks and massive computing costs
• Reuters via Investing.com: Anthropic recorded net loss of over $80 billion in first half of this year
• Fortune: Anthropic’s S-1 leaks (again), a look at the income statement
• Dealroom News: Anthropic’s draft S-1 reveals $16.3B revenue, $80.7B loss and up to $750B compute bill
• Wikimedia Commons: New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street (CC BY-SA 4.0)