- They also found warning signs. Betting on Anthropic is not only betting that AI will deliver on its enormous promises, but also that customers will continue to spend at a rate that will keep pace with massive IT costs.
- There’s also a bet that Anthropic can continue to offer models good enough to justify high prices, even as competition heats up and cheaper alternatives improve.
What they say: Reaching a $2 trillion valuation would require 50% growth, according to Theory Ventures.
- “What is Anthropic worth?” » Theory’s Tomasz Tunguz asked rhetorically. “The case for a very large number is simple,” he said, noting that the company grew quickly with a high margin and generated an operating profit.
- “The arguments against are just as simple,” he added, pointing to its $637 billion in IT commitments, non-cancelable contracts and no guarantee of customer loyalty.
Catch up quickly: Monday’s filing offers the most detailed public examination yet of Anthropic’s business, finances and risks as it prepares for a potentially record-breaking IPO. (See what Claude and ChatGPT say about OpenAI to see if they would invest).
As Tounguz noted, the deposit had nourished a variety of perspectives.
The good: Anthropic has nearly 2,000 customers with $1 million or more in revenue, and 250 with $10 million or more. Half of the Fortune 500 companies pay the company $100,000 a year, and those customers spent less than 0.1% of their total spending in the third quarter on Anthropic.
- “We’re very early,” longtime technology analyst Ben Bajarin said on X. He pointed out that there are 300 million global companies outside of China that spend nearly $1.5 trillion on enterprise software each year.
- The company had more than $130 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June 30, about $10 billion less than the total raised, demonstrating significant financial discipline, some investors said.
- As noted, Anthropic had revenue per employee of $6.6 million at the end of the third quarter, only slightly lower than that of Nvidia, which is generally considered one of the most efficient tech operators.
The bad (or maybe bad): Anthropic’s five largest customers accounted for approximately 25% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026.
- Many Anthropic customers pay as you go and do not make multi-year commitments. But the company’s IT obligations extend for years and include minimum payments, regardless of the capacity actually used.
- Nearly 50% of Anthropic’s first-half revenue came from cloud marketplaces operated by Amazon, Google and Microsoft, companies that are also investors, IT providers and competitors.
- This makes hyperscalers huge winners, since they collect revenue in multiple ways, once by providing compute and also as platform fees.
- The company said 5% to 7% of its revenue in the first nine months of 2026 came from customers using Anthropic models in violation of its policies or terms of service. Some outside experts believe much of this comes from distillation, the practice of querying a model an immense number of times for training purposes.
The surprising/intriguing: Anthropic’s deal with Elon Musk expands.
- According to Anthropic filings, the company’s payments to SpaceX are now expected to reach $3.1 billion per month and up to $120.5 billion for IT through 2029, up from $1.25 billion per month at the time of SpaceX’s IPO filing. (Yes, but: either party may cancel this agreement with 90 days’ notice.)
- Anthropic has a lot of money on its books. His filing lists more than $134 billion in cash and similar securities. That represents almost all the money the company has raised, leading some to wonder whether the company paid a large portion of its bills with convertible notes.
- Others have pointed out how little Anthropic’s costs appear to be reflected in what’s known as “cost of goods sold,” which directly affects reported profit margins.
- CEO Dario Amodei received nearly $18 million in total compensation in 2025, while Anthropic disclosed millions in personal security expenses for its two top executives.
- And speaking of Amodei and its co-founders, the filing details an unusual succession plan in which they can nominate successors for their voting rights, subject to the approval of the other co-founders.
The bottom line: Anthropic has demonstrated that the demand for powerful AI can grow at a staggering rate. Its IPO will test whether investors believe demand can remain strong enough, long enough, to finance the massive infrastructure built to serve it.
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