Anthropic tells investors revenue jumped 45% to $16.8bn ahead of listing plans
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, has told prospective investors that its revenue rose 45% to $16.8bn (£12.7bn) in the three months to the end of September, the BBC has reported.
The figures were presented at the company's headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday, as it lays the groundwork for a stock market listing expected before the end of the year. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment.
The numbers have not been published in any public filing and have not been independently verified.
Revenue has climbed through each quarter of the year, from $4.7bn in the first three months to $11.6bn in the following period, according to the figures shared with investors. The company also reportedly said it was profitable for a second quarter in a row.
Anthropic is one of the largest privately held AI companies in the world. It has raised billions of dollars from investors including Amazon and Google over the past three years, and its models are used by businesses and software developers around the world.
Its revenue, along with that of rival OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT — is watched closely as a measure of how quickly the AI industry is growing, and whether it can earn enough to pay for the buildings, chips and electricity needed to develop the technology.
Those costs are enormous. Technology companies have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to data centres and specialised processors in recent years, betting that demand for AI services will keep rising. Investors have begun to question whether that spending will generate returns quickly enough.
That doubt was visible in the markets this week. Shares in US chip makers fell sharply on Wednesday, including AMD, Nvidia and Intel. Nvidia is among the most valuable companies in the world and a key supplier of the processors used to train AI models.
The selling continued in Asia on Thursday morning. Shares in the Japanese technology investment firm Softbank fell by more than 9%. South Korea's two largest semiconductor manufacturers also declined, with Samsung down 9.4% and SK Hynix down 10.8%.
Regional indexes fell sharply as well. Trading on South Korea's Kospi and Kosdaq was temporarily halted after each dropped by more than 8% — a mechanism known as a circuit breaker, which exchanges use to pause trading during extreme moves. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell by more than 5%.
The declines reflect concern about the scale of AI-related investment rather than a single piece of news. Chip makers and hardware suppliers have benefited most from the AI build-out, and their shares are therefore most sensitive to any sign that spending may slow.
For Anthropic, the reported revenue growth is a strong signal in a competitive market. The company has positioned itself as a safety-focused developer of large language models and competes directly with OpenAI, Google and others.
A stock market listing would require Anthropic to disclose detailed financial information publicly for the first time, including revenue, costs and losses. No date has been confirmed, and the company has not formally announced that a listing will take place.
Until such disclosures are made, the figures reported this week remain statements made privately to prospective investors, and should be read as such.
What is clear is that the AI industry is now large enough to move global markets. Revenue figures shared by a single private company, and questions about how much money is being spent to support the technology, are enough to shift share prices across three continents.
