Anthropic's Q3 sales hit $16.96b as net loss narrows 65%

Anthropic's net loss in the third quarter shrank to $23.29 billion — about one-third of the prior quarter's figure — as the AI model developer prepares for a stock market listing this month.

Anthropic disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday (local time) that its third-quarter sales reached $16.96 billion, roughly 12 times its sales in the same period last year. That marks a 46.7 percent increase from $11.56 billion in the previous quarter. The net loss fell 64.9 percent from $66.3 billion in the same period.

Of the $23.29 billion net loss, $21.9 billion reflects a book loss from fair-value adjustments on convertible bonds and other securities. The actual net loss is estimated at around $1.4 billion. However, unlike the second quarter of this year — when Anthropic posted an operating profit of $974 million — the third quarter saw an operating loss of $567 million.

Anthropic also disclosed that it has entered into commitments to spend vast sums on leases and other arrangements to secure cloud computing capacity and data center infrastructure. As of Sept. 30, the company's total future obligations under AI infrastructure purchase and lease agreements stood at $895.4 billion.

About half of that — $447.5 billion — is expected to be spent by the end of 2030. Payments due within the next 12 months amount to $69.8 billion.

Anthropic also said the cost efficiency of its high-performance models has improved. "Sales in the third quarter grew 1,127 percent compared to the same period last year, while computing and infrastructure costs rose only 382 percent over the same period," the company said. "This demonstrates our computational efficiency."

Anthropic filed a registration statement with the SEC on Oct. 26 for an initial public offering, formally launching the listing process. The company plans to list Class A common shares on NASDAQ this month under the ticker symbol "ANT."

According to Reuters and Bloomberg, Anthropic expects its valuation at the time of listing to reach around $1.5 trillion — a level approaching the $1.8 trillion valuation at which SpaceX listed in June.