6 ms·

That is revenue. What is the net profit?

by testrun 4mo ago

giancarlostoro 4mo ago
They reported 559 million in Q2 of this year. OpenAI on the other hand, is nowhere near this.
- qaq 4mo ago
  because of the mutual sweetheart deal with SpaceX SpaceX gave em discount for the pre IPO quarter so they can show profit Anthropic signed a deal to lease compute that is the bulk of SpaceX revenue
  - zuzululu 4mo ago
    and i think here lies the chess move by Elon he's trying to steal OpenAI's limelight and shit on their road show I'm actually quite surprised how much money Anthropic pulls Also surprised that OpenAI is not pulling as much as I thought All in all it looks like OpenAI is in a bit of a vulnerable position.
    - qaq 4mo ago
      I don't know if it is a chess move but Elon certainly will take every possible opportunity to fk over Sam. Have to admit watching these two sociopaths duking it out is somewhat entertaining.
- elAhmo 4mo ago
  Not using GAAP, so this is just PR for them.
jandrewrogers 4mo ago
If you are growing revenue at a high rate then taking profit is a misallocation of resources. That is short-term thinking. It is much better to reinvest in revenue growth. You can take small profit now or much larger profit later. Insisting that companies need to be profitable even when growing revenue rapidly is failing the marshmallow test.
- smallerize 4mo ago
  I guess net isn't the relevant measure, but what are the unit economics? Are they actually making money selling tokens?
  - crthpl 4mo ago
    on the API, their margins are very high
- nixon_why69 4mo ago
  The point is that the unit economics are way worse because inference is expensive. Cost of goods sold matters, even if you're reinvesting profits.
  - jraby3 4mo ago
    Inference has dropped by like 75% from a year ago. While anthropic does offer more tokens now for the same money, the value of the business is based on an expectation of future profits. There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples of companies being valued this way.
    - nixon_why69 4mo ago
      You could be right but the unit economics matter to this business in a way they don't for a SaaS or ads business, they're not free and you can't just point at revenue.
      - MattDamonSpace 4mo ago
        Yeah but “intelligence” is very valuable and people are willing to pay
        gcgbarbosa 4mo ago
        Except this is not intelligence
elAhmo 4mo ago
Please don't ask those rational questions, revenue is all that maters.
Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
These AI companies will be able to jack prices way way up once companies and users are fully addicted to doing everything with their AI.
daniel_iversen 4mo ago
Doesn't inference have very good profit margins* but all the losses come from training? * For now, when they don't have to compete much against companies like DeepSeek who supplies inference at 1/10th of the cost
- SlinkyOnStairs 4mo ago
  > Doesn't inference have very good profit margins* but all the losses come from training? There is no source for this. Amodei just pulled a hypothetical explicitly distanced from Anthropic out of his ass and kickstarted some citogenesis when people half-remembered that number and started quoting it as truth. The only material claim of Anthropic is that they would "turn an operating profit of $559 million in the June quarter ... The company might not remain profitable for the full year as it plans spending increases due to its vast computing needs." with an explicit disclaimer that: "It is unclear what accounting methods Anthropic has used to book revenue and costs, as the company isn’t yet required to follow the financial-reporting requirements of a public company." https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-propel-anthropic-into-its-first-profitable-quarter-7edbf2f4 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-... This is the exact same quarter where xAI is giving them deeply discounted compute, as such the numbers cannot be projected out to the later quarters once Anthropic has to actually pay xAI for the compute they use. Finally, there's the reality that were the revenue numbers any good, Anthropic would just publish them and leapfrog OpenAI. That they do not provide clear GAAP numbers suggests the numbers are bad.
cmrdporcupine 4mo ago
I suspect the answer is: in the future after Moore's law somehow inevitably does its thing. That has worked in the past for tech infrastructure, so there is clearly a gamble that it does that again here.
kaliqt 4mo ago
While good to ask, that is less relevant so long as they can maintain runway.
wrsh07 4mo ago
Net profit is the wrong metric for high growth companies. You want the unit economics. If the unit economics look great (my understanding is they're at least fine-to-good), then they should not be taking profit because it is very much in their interest to do capex to grow their capacity so that they can continue to grow. It's a knife's edge because if they invest too aggressively it could lead to bankruptcy, but so far they've actually been quite conservative and given their unit economics they can afford to pay $$$$ for expensive inference compute (and indeed that's why they've inked a bunch of deals in the past month or two)
- 383toast 4mo ago
  unit economics aren't great for anthropic are they
  - wrsh07 4mo ago
    What do you think they are, what do you want them to be, and how much revenue and growth do they need before low margins make for a monster of a company?
    - greiskul 4mo ago
      From all their desperation in making sure api keys are not used in contexts where they are not supposed to, I would say that they actually appear to have services where their profit is negative, if a customer is actually using their api to the limits they set, they lose money. They wouldn't have been this desperate in trying to shut off OpenClaw if it wasn't this way. Most companies that provide api infrastructure love when a killer app using their api is made by outsiders. And while you can beat low margin with scale, there is the famous joke "we lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume". If you scale a low margin operation, you can become giant. If you scale a loss making operation, you go bankrupt.
      - wrsh07 4mo ago
        Yup - the subscriptions are a VC subsidy. They've been phasing their enterprise customers directly onto API-pay-per-usage pricing (hence the recent reports from Uber and Microsoft about phasing out Claude code). Rest assured, many of their customers are happy paying for the value they get from Claude code. The subscription is the loss leader to show you how good it is. And people think it's good and worth paying for. There is some reason to think their margins will improve, also: they couldn't really plan for the capacity they've needed so far this year, so they're paying through the nose for it. That's fine because they can pass the cost onto customers and give a more reliable service at cost. But in a few years, they should be able to get those costs under control (presuming some ops excellence. Something Google has in spades)

That is revenue. What is the net profit?

by testrun 4mo ago

That is revenue. What is the net profit?

giancarlostoro 4mo ago

They reported 559 million in Q2 of this year. OpenAI on the other hand, is nowhere near this.

qaq 4mo ago
because of the mutual sweetheart deal with SpaceX SpaceX gave em discount for the pre IPO quarter so they can show profit Anthropic signed a deal to lease compute that is the bulk of SpaceX revenue
- zuzululu 4mo ago
  and i think here lies the chess move by Elon he's trying to steal OpenAI's limelight and shit on their road show I'm actually quite surprised how much money Anthropic pulls Also surprised that OpenAI is not pulling as much as I thought All in all it looks like OpenAI is in a bit of a vulnerable position.
  - qaq 4mo ago
    I don't know if it is a chess move but Elon certainly will take every possible opportunity to fk over Sam. Have to admit watching these two sociopaths duking it out is somewhat entertaining.
elAhmo 4mo ago
Not using GAAP, so this is just PR for them.

jandrewrogers 4mo ago

If you are growing revenue at a high rate then taking profit is a misallocation of resources. That is short-term thinking. It is much better to reinvest in revenue growth. You can take small profit now or much larger profit later. Insisting that companies need to be profitable even when growing revenue rapidly is failing the marshmallow test.

smallerize 4mo ago
I guess net isn't the relevant measure, but what are the unit economics? Are they actually making money selling tokens?
- crthpl 4mo ago
  on the API, their margins are very high
nixon_why69 4mo ago
The point is that the unit economics are way worse because inference is expensive. Cost of goods sold matters, even if you're reinvesting profits.
- jraby3 4mo ago
  Inference has dropped by like 75% from a year ago. While anthropic does offer more tokens now for the same money, the value of the business is based on an expectation of future profits. There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples of companies being valued this way.
  - nixon_why69 4mo ago
    You could be right but the unit economics matter to this business in a way they don't for a SaaS or ads business, they're not free and you can't just point at revenue.
    - MattDamonSpace 4mo ago
      Yeah but “intelligence” is very valuable and people are willing to pay
      - gcgbarbosa 4mo ago
        Except this is not intelligence

elAhmo 4mo ago

Please don't ask those rational questions, revenue is all that maters.

Schlagbohrer 4mo ago

These AI companies will be able to jack prices way way up once companies and users are fully addicted to doing everything with their AI.

daniel_iversen 4mo ago

Doesn't inference have very good profit margins* but all the losses come from training? * For now, when they don't have to compete much against companies like DeepSeek who supplies inference at 1/10th of the cost

SlinkyOnStairs 4mo ago
> Doesn't inference have very good profit margins* but all the losses come from training? There is no source for this. Amodei just pulled a hypothetical explicitly distanced from Anthropic out of his ass and kickstarted some citogenesis when people half-remembered that number and started quoting it as truth. The only material claim of Anthropic is that they would "turn an operating profit of $559 million in the June quarter ... The company might not remain profitable for the full year as it plans spending increases due to its vast computing needs." with an explicit disclaimer that: "It is unclear what accounting methods Anthropic has used to book revenue and costs, as the company isn’t yet required to follow the financial-reporting requirements of a public company." https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-propel-anthropic-into-its-first-profitable-quarter-7edbf2f4 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-... This is the exact same quarter where xAI is giving them deeply discounted compute, as such the numbers cannot be projected out to the later quarters once Anthropic has to actually pay xAI for the compute they use. Finally, there's the reality that were the revenue numbers any good, Anthropic would just publish them and leapfrog OpenAI. That they do not provide clear GAAP numbers suggests the numbers are bad.

cmrdporcupine 4mo ago

I suspect the answer is: in the future after Moore's law somehow inevitably does its thing. That has worked in the past for tech infrastructure, so there is clearly a gamble that it does that again here.

kaliqt 4mo ago

While good to ask, that is less relevant so long as they can maintain runway.

wrsh07 4mo ago

Net profit is the wrong metric for high growth companies. You want the unit economics. If the unit economics look great (my understanding is they're at least fine-to-good), then they should not be taking profit because it is very much in their interest to do capex to grow their capacity so that they can continue to grow. It's a knife's edge because if they invest too aggressively it could lead to bankruptcy, but so far they've actually been quite conservative and given their unit economics they can afford to pay $$$$ for expensive inference compute (and indeed that's why they've inked a bunch of deals in the past month or two)

383toast 4mo ago
unit economics aren't great for anthropic are they
- wrsh07 4mo ago
  What do you think they are, what do you want them to be, and how much revenue and growth do they need before low margins make for a monster of a company?
  - greiskul 4mo ago
    From all their desperation in making sure api keys are not used in contexts where they are not supposed to, I would say that they actually appear to have services where their profit is negative, if a customer is actually using their api to the limits they set, they lose money. They wouldn't have been this desperate in trying to shut off OpenClaw if it wasn't this way. Most companies that provide api infrastructure love when a killer app using their api is made by outsiders. And while you can beat low margin with scale, there is the famous joke "we lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume". If you scale a low margin operation, you can become giant. If you scale a loss making operation, you go bankrupt.
    - wrsh07 4mo ago
      Yup - the subscriptions are a VC subsidy. They've been phasing their enterprise customers directly onto API-pay-per-usage pricing (hence the recent reports from Uber and Microsoft about phasing out Claude code). Rest assured, many of their customers are happy paying for the value they get from Claude code. The subscription is the loss leader to show you how good it is. And people think it's good and worth paying for. There is some reason to think their margins will improve, also: they couldn't really plan for the capacity they've needed so far this year, so they're paying through the nose for it. That's fine because they can pass the cost onto customers and give a more reliable service at cost. But in a few years, they should be able to get those costs under control (presuming some ops excellence. Something Google has in spades)