Anthropic reported $16.8 billion in third-quarter revenue, marking a roughly 45 percent jump from the second quarter, as the company prepares for a planned November IPO. The figures were shared with potential investors at a private meeting in San Francisco, according to multiple US media reports. While revenue climbed significantly, growth slowed compared to the previous quarter when surging demand for the Claude Code developer tool had pushed revenue up by more than 140 percent.
The AI lab also reported an adjusted operating margin of 11 percent for the year through the third quarter and generated $1.70 in revenue for every dollar spent on compute. However, Anthropic estimates that 5 to 7 percent of its revenue comes from distillation, a process where other companies use its AI to train their own models. Although recent countermeasures will likely reduce distillation revenue in the current quarter, it aims to prevent rivals from copying Claude.
Investor skepticism and slowing growth could impact the upcoming public offering, with some potential investors disappointed by the figures and the absence of a full-year outlook. While bankers had previously floated a $2 trillion valuation following a private valuation of $965 billion in May, expectations may now drop below $1.5 trillion amid broader market challenges including inflation, rising borrowing costs, and intense competition from rivals like OpenAI and Google.
This financial update matters because it provides a rare, transparent look at the profitability and revenue sustainability of a major frontier AI lab ahead of what is expected to be the largest public market test of the artificial intelligence boom.