Anthropic’s $80.7 billion loss puts its IPO ambitions under scrutiny
Most of the loss stemmed from an accounting charge tied to convertible bonds, rather than operating expenses. Still, the company’s infrastructure commitments and latest revenue figures are raising questions about the economics behind its AI expansion.
Anthropic is heading toward a planned November stock market debut with rapidly growing revenue, soaring infrastructure costs and a first-half net loss of $80.7 billion, according to a draft prospectus reviewed by Reuters. Most of the reported loss, however, came from an accounting charge rather than money spent running the business.
The San Francisco-based AI company recorded a $72 billion charge related to an increase in the estimated fair value of bonds that can eventually be converted into its shares. The charge helped push its first-half loss sharply higher from $13 billion in the same period a year earlier.
The figures arrive as investors reassess how much they are willing to pay for Anthropic. Some are now considering a valuation of around $1.5 trillion following the company’s latest financial disclosures, Reuters reported last week.
The prospectus also lays bare the scale of the infrastructure investment underpinning the AI boom. Anthropic has committed to spending at least $518 billion over a decade on cloud services, computing and infrastructure. In the first half of this year alone, it spent nearly $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure, compared with $2.3 billion a year earlier.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.
Anthropic’s business continues to expand rapidly, helped by demand for Claude Code, its coding assistant used by developers to write software and build applications. But the pace of growth is becoming a focus for investors as the company prepares to enter public markets.
At an October 14 meeting with prospective IPO investors, Anthropic said its third-quarter revenue rose 45% from the previous quarter to $16.8 billion, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Some investors were nevertheless disappointed by the sequential growth rate. Revenue had more than doubled between the first and second quarters, reaching $11.6 billion in the latter.
The contrast captures a central question facing AI companies seeking public market valuations: whether fast-growing sales can ultimately justify the enormous costs of developing models and securing the computing resources needed to run them.
Anthropic’s reported losses have also been shaped by the accounting treatment of financing instruments tied to its valuation. In September, Reuters reported that the company recorded a $42 billion net loss in 2025, most of it attributable to a similar charge. As its valuation rose, the estimated fair value of the convertible notes tripled year over year.
Excluding that charge, Anthropic recorded an operating loss of about $8.1 billion on revenue of $4.6 billion in 2025.
The reception for Anthropic’s IPO could have implications beyond the company itself. Investors are watching the planned listing as a gauge of appetite for major AI businesses, with rival OpenAI also potentially heading to the public markets next year.
