Anthropic PBC generated $16.8 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2026, a 45% increase over the prior quarter, according to a Financial Times report. The company also reached profitability on an adjusted basis for the first time. The figures were shared at a private meeting between Anthropic executives and investors ahead of the company's planned initial public offering, which is widely expected to take place in November.
The offering could value Anthropic at up to $2 trillion, which would place it among the most valuable companies in the world. Investors are treating Anthropic's revenue as a gauge of the wider artificial intelligence market, a market that has added trillions of dollars to technology stock values. The Financial Times relied on an anonymous source who did not specify whether the $16.8 billion represents gross or net revenue, nor how the company defines profitability.
Prior figures reported by the Wall Street Journal put first quarter revenue at $4.8 billion, and second quarter revenue was later reported at $11.6 billion, more than double the first quarter. The third quarter total of $16.8 billion works out to roughly 45% sequential growth. Because Anthropic remains private, it is not required to disclose details such as how much it spends to generate that growth, leaving investors with limited visibility into its finances.
Anthropic's results carry weight beyond the company itself, given that the health of Anthropic and OpenAI Group PBC is tied to the fortunes of many other technology firms. Last week the Financial Times reported that previously published figures for OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate were wrong, revising the estimate down from about $68 billion to $50 billion. The report attributed the error to a miscalculation by investigators. The Nasdaq index fell 1.25% afterward, and shares of Oracle Corp., CoreWeave Inc., Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. all declined more, reflecting the multiyear, multibillion-dollar contracts those companies hold with the AI developers.
OpenAI was once seen as the AI market leader but has been surpassed this year by Anthropic, which has released a series of frontier models and seen strong enterprise adoption of its Claude Code tool. In May, Anthropic closed a $65 billion funding round that lifted its valuation to $965 billion. The industry has also faced pressure over safety concerns, including the September resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who said the people building AI believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade. Chief Executive Dario Amodei responded with an essay urging companies to slow the pace of improving AI model capabilities so safety measures can catch up, a call backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, though U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for self-regulation instead.
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