Everyone’s talking about Anthropic’s valuation. I’m looking at the revenue.
The numbers are extraordinary. Anthropic generated $41 million in revenue in 2023, $386 million in 2024 and $4.6 billion in 2025. In the first six months of 2026 alone, revenue reached $16.3 billion, roughly 14 times what the company generated during the same period a year earlier.
That kind of growth deserves attention, particularly as Anthropic prepares to enter the public markets. But what interests me even more is how quickly the economics of the business are changing and what that means for its long-term value.
Anthropic is clearly building a serious business. The question is how much of its future success investors are already pricing in.
Extraordinary Growth Comes With Extraordinary Expectations
Revenue tells an impressive story, but Anthropic’s improving operating efficiency is just as important. Operating expenses fell from $2.84 for every dollar of revenue in the first half of 2025 to $1.04 a year later. By the second quarter of 2026, the company had generated nearly $1 billion in operating profit.
The customer metrics reinforce the strength of the business. By September, Anthropic reported approximately 900% net revenue retention among its defined customer cohort and nearly 12,000 customers generating more than $100,000 each in trailing annual revenue. Those figures point to substantial enterprise demand and a business that is scaling at an extraordinary pace.
Yet the economics of AI are fundamentally different from those of traditional software. Anthropic spent nearly $8.9 billion on compute and infrastructure in the first half of 2026, approximately 55% of revenue, before personnel and other operating expenses. Its third-quarter results offer another reminder of how quickly the financial picture can change. Revenue reached approximately $17 billion, while operating performance moved back into a loss as compute expenses increased.
This is why revenue growth alone cannot determine what an AI company is worth. Founders need to understand how much it costs to sustain that growth, whether margins can improve over time and what happens when competition puts pressure on pricing.
The same discipline applies when interpreting Anthropic’s reported losses. Its $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of 2026 attracted considerable attention, but approximately $72.4 billion came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes, derivatives and SAFEs. These were largely noncash accounting adjustments, not operating expenses. The company’s operating loss was $693 million, a very different picture from the headline figure.
Understanding that distinction matters because a company’s valuation should reflect the underlying economics of the business, not simply the largest numbers in its financial statements.
The Real Test Is Turning Demand Into Lasting Value
The broader AI market is demonstrating enormous demand, and Anthropic’s growth is compelling evidence of that opportunity. But demand and profitability aren’t the same thing.
AI companies are making substantial commitments to computing capacity, infrastructure and energy to support their expansion. Building ahead of demand is often necessary, especially in a market moving as quickly as AI. But those investments need to make financial sense as the business scales.
Still, committing billions to capacity does not automatically create billions in value.
Consider a company that signs a multibillion-dollar customer contract. That agreement may represent significant growth, but if fulfilling it requires substantial additional infrastructure spending, the economics become more complicated. The business may be generating more revenue while also taking on greater financial risk.
That’s what makes AI valuations particularly challenging today. The market is evolving quickly, and assumptions about pricing, infrastructure costs and competitive advantages can change just as fast.
The real test is whether these companies can turn extraordinary demand into sustainable cash flow and long-term profitability, even as growth begins to normalize. It’s a challenge that extends well beyond Anthropic and one that every founder building in AI should be thinking about.
What Anthropic’s IPO Means for the Next Generation of AI Companies
Anthropic also highlights a broader challenge in how private companies are valued, particularly in industries where the business can change dramatically between financing rounds.
The latest funding round often becomes the most visible reference point for a company’s worth. But that price reflects a particular moment in time, while the underlying business continues to evolve.
Anthropic’s revenue, operating performance, infrastructure commitments and competitive position have changed dramatically in a relatively short period. A valuation based primarily on an earlier financing or an extrapolation of revenue growth may fail to capture those changes.
Anthropic is reportedly targeting a $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion IPO valuation ahead of its planned Nasdaq listing. For comparison, Eqvista Real-Time Company Valuation® currently estimates Anthropic’s value at approximately $1.54 trillion. Unlike a valuation tied to a single funding round, the estimate updates continuously as market conditions change, offering a more current reference point as the company approaches its IPO. The live valuation and its methodology are publicly available.
The challenge is that even as a company’s fundamentals improve, investor expectations and market conditions can shift in a different direction. Stronger revenue doesn’t automatically translate into a higher valuation, particularly when the cost of sustaining growth or the outlook for future profitability changes.
Private-company valuations should reflect current financial performance, evolving market conditions and the expectations already embedded in a company’s price. Founders need a clear understanding of how their company’s value is evolving to make informed decisions about financing, employee equity, liquidity and eventual exits.
The upcoming wave of AI IPOs will bring greater scrutiny to the relationship between growth and profitability. Public-market investors will have to weigh enormous opportunities against substantial capital requirements, competitive pressures and the expectations already reflected in private valuations.
Looking ahead, I see AI’s potential to create tremendous economic value and Anthropic is demonstrating just how quickly that opportunity can develop. But even an extraordinary company can face extraordinary expectations.
Revenue tells us how quickly a company is growing. The real question is how much lasting value that growth will create and how much of that future is already reflected in today’s price.
That’s what makes Anthropic’s IPO worth watching.
About Tomas:
Tomas Milar is a serial entrepreneur and fintech founder focused on modernizing private-market financial infrastructure. As Founder and CEO of Eqvista, an equity management and private company valuation platform serving more than 25,000 companies worldwide, he leads a company that has valued over $9 trillion in company assets. His work focuses on bringing greater transparency to private company valuations, equity ownership, and shareholder liquidity. He has also built and scaled ventures across the U.S. and Southeast Asia, including Startupr and Cheqly.
