The Anthropic logo. Image: Anthropic
Anthropic took in nearly $17 billion in the three months to September, more than 12 times as much as a year earlier, and the computing bills it has signed up to pay have grown to about $895 billion, according to an amended IPO prospectus it filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
The amendment fills in the third quarter that was left blank in the public filing a week ago. The price range is still empty (“between $ and $”), so the Claude maker’s Nasdaq listing, under the ticker ANT, hasn’t been priced yet.
A $17 billion quarter
Revenue was $16.96 billion between July and September, up 47% from $11.56 billion in the second quarter and up 1,127% from $1.38 billion a year earlier. That is a little more than the $16.8 billion Anthropic told would-be investors in October. Over the first nine months of 2026, revenue reached $33.24 billion, against $2.55 billion a year earlier.
Anthropic also says it now leans less on its biggest buyers. About 79% of third-quarter revenue came from customers outside its top five, up from about 64% in the first quarter, and no single customer accounted for more than 10% of revenue over the nine months.
Compute costs grew faster than sales
The quarter also shows the compute bill catching up. Compute and infrastructure costs rose 77% in three months to $9.86 billion, swallowing 58 cents of every dollar of revenue, up from 48 cents in the second quarter. Anthropic blames $5 billion of compute bought under short-term deals, which it says “currently costs significantly more” than capacity under its multi-year contracts, plus $2 billion of non-cash charges tied to its staff donation matching programme.
The result was an operating loss of $567 million, after an operating profit of $974 million in the second quarter. On Anthropic’s own adjusted measure, which leaves out stock-based pay and non-cash charitable gifts, operating income rose to $2.5 billion, but the adjusted margin fell from 19% to 15%.
The net loss was $23.29 billion for the quarter and $104.04 billion for the nine months. Most of that is an accounting charge rather than cash going out of the door: $21.94 billion in the quarter came from the rising value of convertible notes, SAFEs and similar instruments that will turn into shares. Day-to-day operations brought in $6.6 billion of cash over the nine months, and Anthropic ended September with $95.6 billion in cash and $36.3 billion in short-term investments.
An $895 billion bill
The biggest new number is the size of Anthropic’s commitments. As of and since September 30, it has signed purchase commitments and leases worth about $895.4 billion, “substantially all” of it for compute and infrastructure. About $447.5 billion is due to be spent before the end of 2030 and almost all the rest between 2031 and 2045, with $69.8 billion due in the 12 months to September 2027.
The October filing left that figure blank, and a confidential draft reported in September put the commitments at $518 billion. The new total is made up of:
- Contracts on the books: $320 billion at the end of September, mostly hosting deals with cloud providers.
- Leases not yet started: $451.2 billion, mostly due to begin between 2026 and 2028 and to run about 10 years on average.
- Deals signed since September 30: $100.2 billion, mainly data centre leases and cloud hosting.
- Short-term deals: about $24 billion.
Not all of it is locked in. About $213.8 billion can be cancelled or depends on conditions such as a partner securing financing, sites or regulatory approval. But the total also leaves out deals with no fixed price, which Anthropic estimates will cost another $150 billion to $175 billion as capacity arrives. It expects its capital spending to “increase significantly” as it builds more of its own infrastructure.
Why it matters
Anthropic’s sales are growing faster than almost any company’s in history, but the third quarter shows how quickly extra compute can turn an operating profit into a loss. Investors weighing the IPO, including the up to $3.5 billion share sale in Japan, are being asked to back commitments worth about 13 times its current annual sales rate, the kind of bet at the heart of the AI bubble debate.
Sources: Anthropic, Form S-1/A, Amendment No. 1 (SEC, November 2, 2026); Anthropic, Form S-1 (SEC, October 26, 2026).
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