Anthropic logged net loss of over $80 billion in first half of 2026, WSJ reports
October 20, 2026 3:41 PM EDT
Updated 51 mins ago
Oct 20 (Reuters) - Anthropic reported a net loss of more than $80 billion in the first half of the year and signaled it could spend as much as $750 billion in the coming years to secure more computing capacity, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The loss, up from $13 billion a year earlier, was driven by $72 billion in accounting charges tied to changes in the value of financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise money, the report said, citing a draft prospectus for its IPO.
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The figures show the hefty costs of the AI race even as investors look harder at whether the money companies are pouring into chips and data centers will pay off.
Anthropic’s revenue jumped to $16.3 billion in the six months ended June 30 from $1.1 billion a year ago, while AI infrastructure spending nearly quadrupled to almost $9 billion, the Journal said.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment and Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
ANTHROPIC’S IPO VALUATION UNDER SCRUTINY
Reuters reported first in September that Anthropic posted a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, as part of a series of exclusives from its IPO prospectus.
The company has benefited from the popularity of Claude Code, its coding assistant that developers use to write software and build apps.
But some current investors and prospective investors who attended Anthropic’s investor day last week are weighing a lower valuation for the AI company after its latest financial disclosures, four people familiar with the matter had told Reuters.
The investors who attended the event in San Francisco discussed a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, three of the people had said, a significant step down from the roughly $2 trillion valuation previously expected for the November share sale.
Anthropic told investors at the meeting that its third-quarter revenue jumped 45% to $16.8 billion from the previous quarter, and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis during the quarter.
A cooler reception for Anthropic’s IPO could weigh on the wider AI market, whose near-term prospects investors see as hinging largely on the share sale’s success, ahead of rival OpenAI’s potential listing next year.
Reporting by Aditya Soni and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed
The full article isn’t very long like a handful of paragraphs. TL;DR they lost $72 billion in Q3 despite revenue going up a lot. Same year same quarter was just $13 billion in net loss
Can you elaborate on that a bit more, I figured thats what this was trying to say
The loss, up from $13 billion a year earlier, was driven by $72 billion in accounting charges tied to changes in the value of financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise money, the report said, citing a draft prospectus for its IPO.
Pre-IPO investors fund the company but it isnt like they give all the money upfront. They do it in pieces and can increase or decrease as targets are reached, failed, or pivoted. This keeps the investors less likely to lose money. As debts and losses are shown the value of the company dropped and how much money is on tap for the future decreases. In this case 72B of funding was “lost”. This is paper money because they only had it on paper they didnt have the gold in hand.
Essentially their potential value to their current investors dropped 72B.
The reported net loss is real as they used more money than they made.
Neither factor is going to bankrupt or close the company considering they still have a bunch on hand and their investors still seem to think theres a possibility of profit (just less than before).
It’s not 72 billion dollars lost related to the business.
The money didn’t exist and wasn’t spent.
It’s not clear what the instrument was exactly (I would need to look it up myself, not an accountant). But there are a range of charges that aren’t actually related to profitability of a business. Value of instruments could be tied to a capital raise earlier. EG if they promised a percent of the company as part of a raise, and Anthropic is worth a lot more now. Their liability increases (the percent they owe is worth more now) and they book as a loss.
The paper loss is still critically important though.
“Oh don’t worry about that 64 billion. That’s just something or other the accountants dreamed up. You know what those buzz-harshing assholes are like.”
It’s not as important as you might think. Counter intuitively it’s tied to success as a risky start up. Or arguably they should have got better terms during one of their raises - but hindsight and all that.
For the record I wouldn’t by them for 1.5 trillion dollars.
Is there a way to access this without having to pay for/have an account?
Anthropic logged net loss of over $80 billion in first half of 2026, WSJ reports October 20, 2026 3:41 PM EDT Updated 51 mins ago
Oct 20 (Reuters) - Anthropic reported a net loss of more than $80 billion in the first half of the year and signaled it could spend as much as $750 billion in the coming years to secure more computing capacity, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The loss, up from $13 billion a year earlier, was driven by $72 billion in accounting charges tied to changes in the value of financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise money, the report said, citing a draft prospectus for its IPO.
The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.
The figures show the hefty costs of the AI race even as investors look harder at whether the money companies are pouring into chips and data centers will pay off.
Anthropic’s revenue jumped to $16.3 billion in the six months ended June 30 from $1.1 billion a year ago, while AI infrastructure spending nearly quadrupled to almost $9 billion, the Journal said.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment and Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
ANTHROPIC’S IPO VALUATION UNDER SCRUTINY
Reuters reported first in September that Anthropic posted a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, as part of a series of exclusives from its IPO prospectus. The company has benefited from the popularity of Claude Code, its coding assistant that developers use to write software and build apps.
But some current investors and prospective investors who attended Anthropic’s investor day last week are weighing a lower valuation for the AI company after its latest financial disclosures, four people familiar with the matter had told Reuters.
The investors who attended the event in San Francisco discussed a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, three of the people had said, a significant step down from the roughly $2 trillion valuation previously expected for the November share sale.
Anthropic told investors at the meeting that its third-quarter revenue jumped 45% to $16.8 billion from the previous quarter, and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis during the quarter.
A cooler reception for Anthropic’s IPO could weigh on the wider AI market, whose near-term prospects investors see as hinging largely on the share sale’s success, ahead of rival OpenAI’s potential listing next year.
Reporting by Aditya Soni and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed
The full article isn’t very long like a handful of paragraphs. TL;DR they lost $72 billion in Q3 despite revenue going up a lot. Same year same quarter was just $13 billion in net loss
Despite? More like because. If compute is subsidized, every extra compute adds to the loss.
72 billion was a paper loss. 8 billion loss is still a lot though!
Can you elaborate on that a bit more, I figured thats what this was trying to say
But I didn’t really understand it?
Pre-IPO investors fund the company but it isnt like they give all the money upfront. They do it in pieces and can increase or decrease as targets are reached, failed, or pivoted. This keeps the investors less likely to lose money. As debts and losses are shown the value of the company dropped and how much money is on tap for the future decreases. In this case 72B of funding was “lost”. This is paper money because they only had it on paper they didnt have the gold in hand.
Essentially their potential value to their current investors dropped 72B.
The reported net loss is real as they used more money than they made.
Neither factor is going to bankrupt or close the company considering they still have a bunch on hand and their investors still seem to think theres a possibility of profit (just less than before).
That’s my non-expert understanding anyway.
It’s not 72 billion dollars lost related to the business.
The money didn’t exist and wasn’t spent.
It’s not clear what the instrument was exactly (I would need to look it up myself, not an accountant). But there are a range of charges that aren’t actually related to profitability of a business. Value of instruments could be tied to a capital raise earlier. EG if they promised a percent of the company as part of a raise, and Anthropic is worth a lot more now. Their liability increases (the percent they owe is worth more now) and they book as a loss.
The paper loss is still critically important though.
“Oh don’t worry about that 64 billion. That’s just something or other the accountants dreamed up. You know what those buzz-harshing assholes are like.”
It’s not as important as you might think. Counter intuitively it’s tied to success as a risky start up. Or arguably they should have got better terms during one of their raises - but hindsight and all that.
For the record I wouldn’t by them for 1.5 trillion dollars.
Its important to the people deciding whether to give them more money.
As a selling point that they can deliver incredible ROI?
Fair enough
https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-recorded-net-loss-over-80-billion-first-half-this-year-wsj-reports-2026-10-20/
Thanks for this. The wallhop link posted by another user was a shitty summary.
I tried to paste the original link to archive.ph but got an error.
Can you fill me in/link me to the site you use to get around paywalls?
I mostly use https://periscope.corsfix.com/
Since archive.ph/12ft.io fails quite often for me.
You could try putting the link https://wallhop.io/
(It doesn’t work for all sites, but I’ve had a decent success rate.)
link works for me without paywall or login
huh, I didn’t realize it had a paywall because Brave shows it just fine here…
🏴☠️
Yes, look up Ed ZItron on Youtube. He’ll be talking about it by Friday at the latest if I know him.