Anthropic tells investors quarterly revenue up nearly 50% to $16.8bn ahead of IPO
Simon Willison’s Weblog Simon Willison ● Covered by 6 sources
Anthropic showed investors revenue rising fast, reaching $16.8bn in Q3. It also said distillation was cut back materially, a costly problem for rivals.
Based on reporting by Simon Willison’s Weblog, Simon Willison — read the original for the full story.
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Anthropic spent Wednesday talking to investors, and the numbers were big enough to do the talking for them. Revenue for the third quarter hit $16.8bn, up nearly 50% from the previous quarter, according to people familiar with the meeting cited by the FT.
The progression inside the year was steep. First-quarter revenue was about $4.8bn, then second-quarter revenue jumped to $11.5bn, and by the third quarter it had climbed again to $16.8bn. That is the sort of trajectory that makes people start using the phrase “ahead of an IPO” with a straight face.
Anthropic also said it was generating $1.70 in revenue for every $1 spent on computing power in the third quarter. Adjusted operating margins, excluding stock-based compensation, were 11%. Those are the kind of figures investors like to hear because they suggest the spending is at least being met by real cash coming in, not just by very expensive ambition.
Then there is distillation, the slightly grim bit of AI industry plumbing. Anthropic told investors that rival labs’ use of its model outputs accounted for 5% to 7% of revenue, and that it had cut that back materially in the third quarter. In plain English: other companies training on Anthropic’s work were once a meaningful source of demand, and a costly one for them. The source article said that usage was heavy enough to matter, and that Anthropic has been clamping down.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the part of AI nobody likes to say out loud: the money can be real even when the business model still looks half like a reactor core and half like a legal dispute. Anthropic’s numbers scream IPO readiness, but the distillation detail shows how much of the sector’s growth is still built on everyone mining everyone else. Very elegant, very expensive, very on-brand for 2026.
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