According to the Financial Times, Anthropic has told prospective investors that its third-quarter revenue was $16.8 billion, up about 45% from the previous quarter. Outlets relaying the figure put growth anywhere between 45% and 50%, with no common basis, and Anthropic has not responded publicly.
The number was shared during a full-day investor roadshow at Anthropic's San Francisco office. The report says the company plans to list in November, and the roadshow was meant to set expectations with investors ahead of the offering.
Profit and cash flow
Per the Financial Times, Anthropic told investors it was profitable on an adjusted basis in the third quarter, its second such quarter in a row. The company also said operating cash flow was positive.
Another figure that keeps getting quoted is compute efficiency: for every $1 spent on compute in Q3, the company took in roughly $1.7 in revenue. The report does not break down what counts as compute spending or whether training costs are included.
The bad news sits on the growth curve. Some investors had expected Anthropic's annualized revenue to top $100 billion by year-end. At the Q3 pace, that target is unlikely to be reached.
The quarters side by side
Putting together the figures disclosed so far this year:
| Period | Quarterly revenue | QoQ growth |
|---|---|---|
| Q2 2025 | About $787 million | — |
| Q1 2026 | About $4.73 billion | — |
| Q2 2026 | More than $11.5 billion | More than 140% |
| Q3 2026 | $16.8 billion | About 45% |
The Q2 figure comes from preliminary data Bloomberg reported at the time. The Wall Street Journal gave a different version of $10.9 billion; the two outlets use different bases, and this site's earlier coverage used the latter. Whichever version is taken, the absolute increase in Q3 is above $5 billion, smaller than the jump from Q1 to Q2.
A rough calculation: quarterly revenue of $16.8 billion averages out to about $5.6 billion a month. To reach $100 billion in annualized revenue by year-end, December alone would need to bring in about $8.3 billion, meaning monthly revenue in Q4 would have to rise by roughly another 50%. At Q3's quarter-on-quarter pace, that is hard to cover in a single quarter.
Working back from the 1.7x ratio, Anthropic spent about $9.9 billion on compute in Q3. This is only an estimate, and it assumes both figures use the same basis.
Why growth is slowing
The report offers no explanation from Anthropic itself, only external pressures. As relayed by the Financial Times, OpenAI has recently won back some share with GPT-6 Astra, and cheaper Chinese models with comparable capabilities are also listed as a revenue risk. Investors' concerns center on slowing AI spending and whether profitability can last. These are factors summarized in the reporting; there is currently no verifiable breakdown of how much revenue each one affected.
Market reaction
After the news broke, the AI hardware supply chain took the first hit. A Bloomberg commentary noted that South Korea's KOSPI fell by as much as 9.3% intraday and Japan's Nikkei 225 by as much as 5.4%, naming companies closely tied to AI investment such as Nvidia, Oracle and CoreWeave. Some analysts cautioned that TSMC has just posted record profit, and that one company's growth rate alone is not enough to judge whether demand across the industry is cooling.
Separately, one account says distillation by competitors once accounted for 5% to 7% of Anthropic's revenue before being cut back sharply, and banking sources have floated a listing valuation of about $2 trillion and a raise of more than $100 billion. All of these are unconfirmed rumors; Anthropic has not confirmed them, and the official figures in the prospectus have not been made public.
Sources: Financial Times, Investing.com, CocoLoop, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal. Quarterly revenue, quarter-on-quarter growth and the compute-to-revenue ratio are based on investor materials as relayed by the Financial Times; the Q2 figure is based on Bloomberg's preliminary data.