Anthropic's quarterly revenue jumps ~50% to $16.8bn ahead of IPO

Simon Willison · rss · 2026-10-15

Per the FT, Anthropic disclosed ahead of its IPO: Q1 revenue $4.8bn, Q2 $11.5bn, Q3 $16.8bn (up nearly 50% QoQ).
In Q3 it earned $1.70 of revenue per $1 spent on compute; adjusted operating margin (ex-stock comp) was 11%.
"Distillation" — rival labs training on Anthropic's outputs — accounted for 5–7% of revenue and was materially cut back in Q3. Napkin math: at Q2 levels, other labs were spending over half a billion dollars per quarter distilling Anthropic's models.

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