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>Anthropic has 80%+ margins on inference. That's like saying my delivery company is profitable because with current gas prices, my margin is 80%. Yea, what abo

>Anthropic has 80%+ margins on inference. That's like saying my delivery company is profitable because with current gas prices, my margin is 80%. Yea, what about all money you spent to get there? You still profitable then?

tristanj 2mo ago
Yes, actually. Anthropic has gross margins of 40%+, hit $75B ARR last month, and (as of this quarter) is profitable.
- stackskipton 2mo ago
  As Ed Zitron pointed out, that "quarter" of profitability is EBITDA profitability and comes with plenty of creative accounting. When they do it for a year, we can say "They have found profitability"
  - tristanj 2mo ago
    Why are you citing old news? Zitron wrote that months ago when Anthropic was reported to have ~30B ARR. Anthropic now has more than double that, at even higher margins. There's no doubt at this point that Anthropic is profitable.
    - stackskipton 2mo ago
      Because again, we haven't seen further reports. As always, we are debating financials on a company that doesn't have to disclose them regularly.
      - tristanj 2mo ago
        We most certainly have: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-is-most-important-number-tech https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i... The companies are growing so rapidly that citing their financials from several months ago is practically worthless.
        disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
        > We most certainly have: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i... This is all un-audited speculation. Even audited financials often have massive weirdness, but unaudited revenue/margin numbers are basically garbage. > The companies are growing so rapidly that citing their financials from several months ago is practically worthless. I wish I lived in a world where this was true. Unless their inference margins are fat enough to pay for training and employees (including SBC) then their historical financials are really important. Again, I could be wrong here but without the S-1 nobody really knows (unless they work for Anthropic, in which case they should really not be commenting in this thread).
    - InsideOutSanta 2mo ago
      If they were profitable, they'd release real numbers and announce concrete plans for an IPO. They are very obviously not profitable; they just announced a $65B Series H two months ago. They're almost literally setting money on fire.
      - tristanj 2mo ago
        Utterly false -- review the numbers yourself 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-... https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-3q26-profit-over-1b-the https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-3q26-profit-... The company was profitable in Q2 and is projected to exceed $1B in profit in Q3.
        stackskipton 2mo ago
        I can't read the first article 100% but it's linked here: https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle... which I noted in my original post seems to be full of juiced numbers. Second link talks about revenue and operating costs. Again, it's very possible that Anthropic is profitable as I hinted looking at pure revenue vs operating costs. That's like saying your delivery service is profitable because you are only looking at the cost of drivers + gas and ignoring maintenance, car purchases and building of garages to get you to that point. Again, the poster you replied to is right. If they are extremely profitable, the logical thing is file S-1 publicly and IPO. The fact they haven't done so is interesting.
        tristanj 2mo ago
        1) Ed Zitron has one of the worst track records in the AI space. He's consistently wrong about everything. Every major prediction he has made over the past five years has aged terribly. 2) After calling the doom of OpenAI and Anthropic for half a decade, Zitron pivoted this year into accusing these companies of financial engineering and fraud. I have read the "article" you linked and he makes this accusation with no evidence backing it up. 3) I intentionally did not address your "delivery service" example because it is financially illiterate. Per the first section of the links provided (which you can read without paywall), Anthropic is EBITDA profitable. EBITDA profitability implies the company has positive gross margins AND is operational profitable, which means the company is profitable under your fictitious "delivery service" scenario. 4) Claiming a profitable company must immediately file an S-1 and IPO is a non-sequitur. Thousands of large, highly profitable companies choose to stay private for strategic reasons. 5) Did you casually forget the fact that Anthropic is currently in the process of going public? They already filed a draft S-1 with the SEC. They're planning an IPO this October. Having gone through an IPO myself, it takes over a year of preparation for an IPO. The slow timeline is completely normal for a company of their size.
  - WarmWash 2mo ago
    This[1][2] Ed Zitron, or another one? Because I don't know how you can be so totally and completely wrong for so many years, and still have people lend you credibility. But I definitely do understand how you can rage farm subscription dollars from suckers for years. [1]https://www.wheresyoured.at/bubble-trouble/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/bubble-trouble/ [2]https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/
    - tacktal 2mo ago
      Yea what do guys like Damodaran know about finance and valuation. This board is only good to understand the consensus dipshit opinion.
- etempleton 2mo ago
  You have to assume that they aren’t being too creative with their accounting, which Anthropic and Open AI most certainly are.
- etempleton 2mo ago
  Until they are public and they release full financials using standard accounting practices, I would take what they say with a grain of salt. SpaceX also painted a pretty rosey picture of their financials, but when they filed for IPO it became clear they were doing some real cherry picking and in actuality they were losing a ton of money. If they really were doing so well they would file publicly and be rushing to IPO. I guarantee they are losing billions per quarter. You can say they make money on inference, but that is irrelevant. That doesn't include all of their overhead and indirect costs let alone model training.

tristanj 2mo ago

Yes, actually. Anthropic has gross margins of 40%+, hit $75B ARR last month, and (as of this quarter) is profitable.

stackskipton 2mo ago
As Ed Zitron pointed out, that "quarter" of profitability is EBITDA profitability and comes with plenty of creative accounting. When they do it for a year, we can say "They have found profitability"
- tristanj 2mo ago
  Why are you citing old news? Zitron wrote that months ago when Anthropic was reported to have ~30B ARR. Anthropic now has more than double that, at even higher margins. There's no doubt at this point that Anthropic is profitable.
  - stackskipton 2mo ago
    Because again, we haven't seen further reports. As always, we are debating financials on a company that doesn't have to disclose them regularly.
    - tristanj 2mo ago
      We most certainly have: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-is-most-important-number-tech https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i... The companies are growing so rapidly that citing their financials from several months ago is practically worthless.
      - disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
        > We most certainly have: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i... This is all un-audited speculation. Even audited financials often have massive weirdness, but unaudited revenue/margin numbers are basically garbage. > The companies are growing so rapidly that citing their financials from several months ago is practically worthless. I wish I lived in a world where this was true. Unless their inference margins are fat enough to pay for training and employees (including SBC) then their historical financials are really important. Again, I could be wrong here but without the S-1 nobody really knows (unless they work for Anthropic, in which case they should really not be commenting in this thread).
  - InsideOutSanta 2mo ago
    If they were profitable, they'd release real numbers and announce concrete plans for an IPO. They are very obviously not profitable; they just announced a $65B Series H two months ago. They're almost literally setting money on fire.
    - tristanj 2mo ago
      Utterly false -- review the numbers yourself 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-... https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-3q26-profit-over-1b-the https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-3q26-profit-... The company was profitable in Q2 and is projected to exceed $1B in profit in Q3.
      - stackskipton 2mo ago
        I can't read the first article 100% but it's linked here: https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle... which I noted in my original post seems to be full of juiced numbers. Second link talks about revenue and operating costs. Again, it's very possible that Anthropic is profitable as I hinted looking at pure revenue vs operating costs. That's like saying your delivery service is profitable because you are only looking at the cost of drivers + gas and ignoring maintenance, car purchases and building of garages to get you to that point. Again, the poster you replied to is right. If they are extremely profitable, the logical thing is file S-1 publicly and IPO. The fact they haven't done so is interesting.
        tristanj 2mo ago
        1) Ed Zitron has one of the worst track records in the AI space. He's consistently wrong about everything. Every major prediction he has made over the past five years has aged terribly. 2) After calling the doom of OpenAI and Anthropic for half a decade, Zitron pivoted this year into accusing these companies of financial engineering and fraud. I have read the "article" you linked and he makes this accusation with no evidence backing it up. 3) I intentionally did not address your "delivery service" example because it is financially illiterate. Per the first section of the links provided (which you can read without paywall), Anthropic is EBITDA profitable. EBITDA profitability implies the company has positive gross margins AND is operational profitable, which means the company is profitable under your fictitious "delivery service" scenario. 4) Claiming a profitable company must immediately file an S-1 and IPO is a non-sequitur. Thousands of large, highly profitable companies choose to stay private for strategic reasons. 5) Did you casually forget the fact that Anthropic is currently in the process of going public? They already filed a draft S-1 with the SEC. They're planning an IPO this October. Having gone through an IPO myself, it takes over a year of preparation for an IPO. The slow timeline is completely normal for a company of their size.
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  This[1][2] Ed Zitron, or another one? Because I don't know how you can be so totally and completely wrong for so many years, and still have people lend you credibility. But I definitely do understand how you can rage farm subscription dollars from suckers for years. [1]https://www.wheresyoured.at/bubble-trouble/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/bubble-trouble/ [2]https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/
  - tacktal 2mo ago
    Yea what do guys like Damodaran know about finance and valuation. This board is only good to understand the consensus dipshit opinion.
etempleton 2mo ago
You have to assume that they aren’t being too creative with their accounting, which Anthropic and Open AI most certainly are.
etempleton 2mo ago
Until they are public and they release full financials using standard accounting practices, I would take what they say with a grain of salt. SpaceX also painted a pretty rosey picture of their financials, but when they filed for IPO it became clear they were doing some real cherry picking and in actuality they were losing a ton of money. If they really were doing so well they would file publicly and be rushing to IPO. I guarantee they are losing billions per quarter. You can say they make money on inference, but that is irrelevant. That doesn't include all of their overhead and indirect costs let alone model training.