5 ms·

Anthropic revenue reportedly jumps to more than $11.5B in second quarter

31 points by AnodicElegy 2mo ago

rogerkirkness 2mo ago
There is just no way all these data center investments in the trillions pay off. That has to be paid out of cashflow, like, real profit. The price to do useful things keeps falling, the payroll economy will crash long before there's actual trillions of dollars of cashflow for tokens.
- rvz 2mo ago
  It is the entire scam and many of those funding the data center build-out know this. Otherwise why are they hiding the trillions of debt under the rug? There's a reason why a company like Stripe can stay private far longer than Anthropic or OpenAI can. These AI companies have taken in all the capital from private investors and are still losing hundreds of billions and have no choice but to hype up the IPO and dump some of the stock at a purposefully inflated valuation to retail investors.
  - mlnj 2mo ago
    They are worth (on paper) so much that there are not enough retail money to buy them anymore. All these companies can do is put Uncle Sam on the hook to print money for them. There is no other way.
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  They just need 5% of the worlds population to get $50-100 value per month out of them. Even in my non-SWE job, paying $100/mo for my current $20/mo plan would still be a no-brainer. I don't think there is much concern about open models either. Compute is constrained for the foreseeable future, and money is what will determine who gets it. Nevermind that the US will likely block Chinese model imports or China will block exports at some point. The cold war has already begun here.
  - mlnj 2mo ago
    I highly doubt 415 million people will find enough reason to purchase $100 worth of Anthropic, especially when the price of intelligence keeps going down and smaller models become more and more capable to meet the average person's needs like drafting emails, customer support, basic RAG.
    - eddq 2mo ago
      Also that bozo is not bringing to the surface the implicit assumption of going-concern in perpituity. Most people shouldn't open their mouths / write anything re. valuation TBH.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - WarmWash 2mo ago
      The cost of intelligence doesn't matter, it will just make margins wider. Just look at software over the last 20 years. People pay based on the value they receive, not the cost the produce or serve it. That fact is literally is the backbone of tech, and why it has been an absolute money machine. I think the worst case scenario for the labs is current (or next gen) SoTA models reaching a point where cheap consumer hardware can fully run them. But the labs practically have a monopsony on compute, and getting the kind of long context current models thrive on out of 16GB GDDR6 is gonna be a trick.
      - 3dd3 2mo ago
        "But the labs practically have a monopsony on compute..." Another bozo who read a intro microeconomics textbook, learned a fancy word, and doesn't know how to apply it! LOL. Wow you people on here are really funny.
      - gizmo686 2mo ago
        Tech has been a money machine because it has a marginal cost if approximately 0, so tech companies could literally give there products away and live off of the pennies they get from serving adds. Software is one of the hardest product classes to get people to pay for because the cost is anchored at 0.
- lokar 2mo ago
  They are valued as if one company will win and get almost the entire market. And that the market will be massive and profitable.
  - GolfPopper 2mo ago
    That's because the implicit sales pitch is: "We will create a tame AI overlord and rule the world with it!"
- budsniffer952 2mo ago
  Sounds like you don't know what cashflow, profit, revenue and investment are. Why on earth do data centres need to be built from cashflow???
- keeda 2mo ago
  I did some napkin math in a comment a little while ago, that if the whole shebang comes to a screeching hard stop where all these investments are written down to 0 and all AI revenue disappears completely, these trillions of debt could be repaid, with interest, by the hyperscalers with their pre-AI firehoses of cash flow in 6 - 8 years. It’s never going to be that simplistic, of course, but that doesn’t seem like a very dire situation.
- tim333 2mo ago
  The optimistic view is AI improves and generates significant value. You probably need it to generate of the order of 1% of world GDP for the investments to make sense.
  - alasdair_ 2mo ago
    That honestly seems reasonable. AI is more relevant than oil.
    - tim333 2mo ago
      Also there's a recent ramp up in spending suggesting things are on the up. https://x.com/a16z/status/2088658228959953052/photo/1 https://x.com/a16z/status/2088658228959953052/photo/1 Up like 3x in half a year or something. I think current investment to date is ~$1tn and revenues are ~$100bn so you'd only need the growth to keep up a short while longer for the current lot to pan out.
dominotw 2mo ago
cant access bloomberg link. so they are "leaking" these numbers to press ? why ? i cannot think of any non shady reason to do so
seafoam 2mo ago
Anthropic would publish audited financial statements, if they saw it to be in their interest.
- Analemma_ 2mo ago
  Which pre-IPO companies publish audited financial statements?
- williamcotton 2mo ago
  It is still in their interest to not report "false or misleading statements that you or others on your behalf make regarding your company." https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/exempt-offerings/frequently-asked-questions-about-exempt-offerings https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/exempt-offeri...
- estearum 2mo ago
  And why would it be in their interest...?
  - brookst 2mo ago
    Scratching my head too. Why? Spend a lot of money and effort, to share info you don’t have to, which can only create liability?
- __natty__ 2mo ago
  As someone who does not understand how IPO works. So they do not need to show whole “big picture” of their revenue vs costs before going public? Wouldn’t build it trust to show they are healthy company worth investing besides speculation? (It must be naive question from)
  - pineaux 2mo ago
    No, as i understand it: the underwriters are the banks that write out the shares and give a sort of guarantee. So they decide the price of the IPO.
  - 2mo ago
solomatov 2mo ago
As far as I remember there was report of their run rate. How does it align with this?
- yread 2mo ago
  I think it was 48B for 2026 so they got some growin to do
- jonas21 2mo ago
  They reported a $47B run rate in May. This article claims $4.7B revenue in Q1 and $11.5 B in Q2. It all aligns with a very high growth rate. Here's one set of numbers that fits (though I would guess the actual growth was spikier than this): Jan $1.0 B Feb $1.5 B Mar $2.2 B Apr $3.0 B May $3.9 B Jun $4.6 B
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
cactusplant7374 2mo ago
There is a narrative that subscriptions are subsidized. Perhaps we should consider that API users are being price gouged?
- arjie 2mo ago
  Inference is profitable. Even open models can be profitable. Obviously your cost of capital is the thing that influences that the most.
  - dgellow 2mo ago
    Do we know this as a fact? Do we have proofs it is profitable? I haven’t seen any evidence so far, it’s mostly something repeated and accepted as fact
    - Arnt 2mo ago
      Aren't there providers who will run open models for you? If those are profitable, or haven't taken large investments, then it's reasonable to assume that the same thing is profitable for other providers.
    - WithinReason 2mo ago
      OpenRouter exists
- kingkongjaffa 2mo ago
  No way of knowing, this report is about revenue not profit.
  - eddq 2mo ago
    We already know they are not profitable in the truest sense w.r.t valuation. FCFF = EBIT(1-t) - Reinvestment. This is how the operating assets are valued via intrinsic valuation. Could they generate immense earnings and cash flows net of reinvestment? Sure. DO I believe so? Nope. They've got way too out infront ahead of their skies about where this technology belongs and operates best.
ashrt1154 2mo ago
The Mercedes Benz group has Q2 revenues of $36 billion and is profitable. According to Anthropic calculations, it has $144 billion of yearly revenue. The market cap however is only $50 billion: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MBGYY/mercedes-benz-group-ag/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MBGYY/mercedes-ben... That means that Anthropic with its lousy revenues should have an IPO for $25 billion and not $2 trillion. All growth scenarios are a complete fantasy. They aren't even profitable and will never be.
- readthenotes1 2mo ago
  I've seen most people compare p/e ratios of companies in the same industry as there is a big difference across industries. Why do you believe the business of Anthropic and MercedesBenz are similar?
- tim333 2mo ago
  Valuations are based of future expectations. I guess people are expecting Anthropic and or AI to do well.
senectus1 2mo ago
11.5B huh... they apparently need 200B. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323620 ) got a long way to go.

31 points by AnodicElegy 2mo ago

There is just no way all these data center investments in the trillions pay off. That has to be paid out of cashflow, like, real profit. The price to do useful things keeps falling, the payroll economy will crash long before there's actual trillions of dollars of cashflow for tokens.

rvz 2mo ago
It is the entire scam and many of those funding the data center build-out know this. Otherwise why are they hiding the trillions of debt under the rug? There's a reason why a company like Stripe can stay private far longer than Anthropic or OpenAI can. These AI companies have taken in all the capital from private investors and are still losing hundreds of billions and have no choice but to hype up the IPO and dump some of the stock at a purposefully inflated valuation to retail investors.
- mlnj 2mo ago
  They are worth (on paper) so much that there are not enough retail money to buy them anymore. All these companies can do is put Uncle Sam on the hook to print money for them. There is no other way.
WarmWash 2mo ago
They just need 5% of the worlds population to get $50-100 value per month out of them. Even in my non-SWE job, paying $100/mo for my current $20/mo plan would still be a no-brainer. I don't think there is much concern about open models either. Compute is constrained for the foreseeable future, and money is what will determine who gets it. Nevermind that the US will likely block Chinese model imports or China will block exports at some point. The cold war has already begun here.
- mlnj 2mo ago
  I highly doubt 415 million people will find enough reason to purchase $100 worth of Anthropic, especially when the price of intelligence keeps going down and smaller models become more and more capable to meet the average person's needs like drafting emails, customer support, basic RAG.
  - eddq 2mo ago
    Also that bozo is not bringing to the surface the implicit assumption of going-concern in perpituity. Most people shouldn't open their mouths / write anything re. valuation TBH.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - WarmWash 2mo ago
    The cost of intelligence doesn't matter, it will just make margins wider. Just look at software over the last 20 years. People pay based on the value they receive, not the cost the produce or serve it. That fact is literally is the backbone of tech, and why it has been an absolute money machine. I think the worst case scenario for the labs is current (or next gen) SoTA models reaching a point where cheap consumer hardware can fully run them. But the labs practically have a monopsony on compute, and getting the kind of long context current models thrive on out of 16GB GDDR6 is gonna be a trick.
    - 3dd3 2mo ago
      "But the labs practically have a monopsony on compute..." Another bozo who read a intro microeconomics textbook, learned a fancy word, and doesn't know how to apply it! LOL. Wow you people on here are really funny.
    - gizmo686 2mo ago
      Tech has been a money machine because it has a marginal cost if approximately 0, so tech companies could literally give there products away and live off of the pennies they get from serving adds. Software is one of the hardest product classes to get people to pay for because the cost is anchored at 0.
lokar 2mo ago
They are valued as if one company will win and get almost the entire market. And that the market will be massive and profitable.
- GolfPopper 2mo ago
  That's because the implicit sales pitch is: "We will create a tame AI overlord and rule the world with it!"
budsniffer952 2mo ago
Sounds like you don't know what cashflow, profit, revenue and investment are. Why on earth do data centres need to be built from cashflow???
keeda 2mo ago
I did some napkin math in a comment a little while ago, that if the whole shebang comes to a screeching hard stop where all these investments are written down to 0 and all AI revenue disappears completely, these trillions of debt could be repaid, with interest, by the hyperscalers with their pre-AI firehoses of cash flow in 6 - 8 years. It’s never going to be that simplistic, of course, but that doesn’t seem like a very dire situation.
tim333 2mo ago
The optimistic view is AI improves and generates significant value. You probably need it to generate of the order of 1% of world GDP for the investments to make sense.
- alasdair_ 2mo ago
  That honestly seems reasonable. AI is more relevant than oil.
  - tim333 2mo ago
    Also there's a recent ramp up in spending suggesting things are on the up. https://x.com/a16z/status/2088658228959953052/photo/1 https://x.com/a16z/status/2088658228959953052/photo/1 Up like 3x in half a year or something. I think current investment to date is ~$1tn and revenues are ~$100bn so you'd only need the growth to keep up a short while longer for the current lot to pan out.

dominotw 2mo ago

cant access bloomberg link. so they are "leaking" these numbers to press ? why ? i cannot think of any non shady reason to do so

seafoam 2mo ago

Anthropic would publish audited financial statements, if they saw it to be in their interest.

Analemma_ 2mo ago
Which pre-IPO companies publish audited financial statements?
williamcotton 2mo ago
It is still in their interest to not report "false or misleading statements that you or others on your behalf make regarding your company." https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/exempt-offerings/frequently-asked-questions-about-exempt-offerings https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/exempt-offeri...
estearum 2mo ago
And why would it be in their interest...?
- brookst 2mo ago
  Scratching my head too. Why? Spend a lot of money and effort, to share info you don’t have to, which can only create liability?
__natty__ 2mo ago
As someone who does not understand how IPO works. So they do not need to show whole “big picture” of their revenue vs costs before going public? Wouldn’t build it trust to show they are healthy company worth investing besides speculation? (It must be naive question from)
- pineaux 2mo ago
  No, as i understand it: the underwriters are the banks that write out the shares and give a sort of guarantee. So they decide the price of the IPO.
- 2mo ago

solomatov 2mo ago

As far as I remember there was report of their run rate. How does it align with this?

yread 2mo ago
I think it was 48B for 2026 so they got some growin to do
jonas21 2mo ago
They reported a $47B run rate in May. This article claims $4.7B revenue in Q1 and $11.5 B in Q2. It all aligns with a very high growth rate. Here's one set of numbers that fits (though I would guess the actual growth was spikier than this): Jan $1.0 B Feb $1.5 B Mar $2.2 B Apr $3.0 B May $3.9 B Jun $4.6 B
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]

cactusplant7374 2mo ago

There is a narrative that subscriptions are subsidized. Perhaps we should consider that API users are being price gouged?

arjie 2mo ago
Inference is profitable. Even open models can be profitable. Obviously your cost of capital is the thing that influences that the most.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  Do we know this as a fact? Do we have proofs it is profitable? I haven’t seen any evidence so far, it’s mostly something repeated and accepted as fact
  - Arnt 2mo ago
    Aren't there providers who will run open models for you? If those are profitable, or haven't taken large investments, then it's reasonable to assume that the same thing is profitable for other providers.
  - WithinReason 2mo ago
    OpenRouter exists
kingkongjaffa 2mo ago
No way of knowing, this report is about revenue not profit.
- eddq 2mo ago
  We already know they are not profitable in the truest sense w.r.t valuation. FCFF = EBIT(1-t) - Reinvestment. This is how the operating assets are valued via intrinsic valuation. Could they generate immense earnings and cash flows net of reinvestment? Sure. DO I believe so? Nope. They've got way too out infront ahead of their skies about where this technology belongs and operates best.

ashrt1154 2mo ago

The Mercedes Benz group has Q2 revenues of $36 billion and is profitable. According to Anthropic calculations, it has $144 billion of yearly revenue. The market cap however is only $50 billion: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MBGYY/mercedes-benz-group-ag/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MBGYY/mercedes-ben... That means that Anthropic with its lousy revenues should have an IPO for $25 billion and not $2 trillion. All growth scenarios are a complete fantasy. They aren't even profitable and will never be.

readthenotes1 2mo ago
I've seen most people compare p/e ratios of companies in the same industry as there is a big difference across industries. Why do you believe the business of Anthropic and MercedesBenz are similar?
tim333 2mo ago
Valuations are based of future expectations. I guess people are expecting Anthropic and or AI to do well.

senectus1 2mo ago

11.5B huh... they apparently need 200B. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323620 ) got a long way to go.