Two numbers about the same company are making the rounds this week, and they point in opposite directions. One says Anthropic is making money. The other says it lost $42 billion last year.
Neither is necessarily wrong. The gap between them is a lesson in how to read the financials of a fast-growing AI company heading toward a public listing.
What Anthropic is reported to have told investors
Bloomberg reported in August that documents Anthropic gave prospective investors showed second-quarter 2026 revenue of more than $11.5 billion, up from $787 million a year earlier, along with positive adjusted operating income, according to The Next Web’s summary of that report. First-quarter revenue was $4.73 billion.
In September, the Financial Times reported, citing multiple unnamed people, that Anthropic told investors it expected a second straight quarter of positive adjusted operating income. The report said gross margins exceeded 80% before revenue shared with distribution partners such as Amazon and before model-training costs. Reuters, relaying the FT story, said it could not immediately verify the claim.
The latest update comes from Whatfinger’s write-up of a Bloomberg segment on October 15. It says Anthropic told prospective investors that third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion and that the company is profitable on an adjusted basis. That figure rests on one secondhand summary of unnamed sourcing, and no Anthropic executive is quoted. Treat it as unconfirmed.
What the IPO prospectus reportedly shows
The other number comes from a prospectus that Reuters said it reviewed, as relayed by investingLive and RuntimeWire in late September. This reporting has not been checked against the filing itself, and Anthropic declined to comment.
For 2025, the reports say:
- Revenue was nearly $4.6 billion, up roughly 12 times.
- The operating loss was about $8 billion, up from about $3 billion in 2024.
- The net loss was $42 billion.
- Compute and infrastructure spending was about $7.3 billion, more than half of roughly $12.7 billion in operating expenses.
- Cash and short-term investments were about $20 billion at the end of December.
How the same company has both numbers
The $34 billion gap between the $8 billion operating loss and the $42 billion net loss is the key. investingLive describes roughly $34 billion of the net loss as an accounting charge tied to the estimated value of financing that could convert into shares, and not cash spent running the business.
That is a non-cash item. It matters to anyone valuing the company, but it does not describe how much money the business burns operating day to day. The operating loss is the better guide to that, and even it is large: about $8 billion on $4.6 billion of revenue.
Then there is the word adjusted. Adjusted operating income is not a standard accounting measure. Companies choose what to leave out, and the reporting reviewed here does not say what Anthropic excludes. Revenue also grew very fast: first-quarter 2026 revenue of $4.73 billion was already larger than all of 2025. A profitable quarter in 2026 and a large loss for 2025 can both be real.
The number that dwarfs both
It also helps to separate three different questions. Is the product selling? The revenue reports say yes, and strongly. Does each dollar of revenue earn money after the direct costs of serving it? The reported gross margin above 80% suggests so, with the caveat that it excludes revenue sharing and training costs. Can the company pay for the capacity it has promised to buy? That third question is the one a single profitable quarter cannot answer, and it is the one an IPO is meant to fund.
The prospectus reportedly lists about $518 billion in cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations over the coming years. Against roughly $20 billion in cash at the end of 2025, that is the figure that frames the risk. Profit in one quarter does not answer whether revenue can keep growing fast enough to cover commitments of that size.
The reports also flag concentration. Nearly a quarter of revenue reportedly came from two customers, and many large clients are not on long-term contracts, so spending could be cut quickly.
Valuation and timing
Reuters, as relayed by investingLive, said the company could be valued above $2 trillion, more than double its own estimate of about $965 billion in May. Backers told the Financial Times in August they expected a $2 trillion valuation in October, per The Next Web. The listing is likely to come after the November midterm elections, according to earlier Reuters reporting. These are expectations, not confirmed terms.
For context, investingLive notes SpaceX listed at around a $1.8 trillion valuation in June and now trades below its first-day close.
Investors comparing the two stories should also keep the timeline in mind. The revenue figures cover 2026 quarters, while the loss and obligations figures come from the 2025 prospectus. Mixing periods is the easiest way to misread the company, and no report reviewed here offers one consistent set of numbers for the same period across profit, cash and commitments.
What to watch next
Watch the public filing. Once a prospectus is public, three things can be checked directly: how “adjusted operating income” is defined, how the $518 billion in obligations is scheduled over time, and how much of revenue comes from the largest customers. Those facts will say more than any single profit headline.
Also watch the next run-rate update. Bloomberg reported in August, citing unnamed people, that annualized revenue passed $65 billion by the end of July, more than seven times the level at the end of 2025. Growth like that is the entire bull case.
Editor’s take
I rely on AI tools daily, so I want these companies to be healthy, but a profit headline is not a verdict. The takeaway I would stand behind: do not trade or judge Anthropic on the word “profitable.” Wait for the public filing and read how “adjusted” is defined, because that one definition decides whether the profit story and the $42 billion loss story are the same company or two different ones.
