According to Woofun AI, artificial intelligence giant Anthropic is speeding up its initial public offering (IPO) process, and the target valuation has broken through the $2 trillion mark. Although the market has high expectations for its long-term prospects, the financial details disclosed by the company on the eve of the sprint listing show that the pace of its revenue expansion is facing phased adjustments, and the efficiency of return on computing power investment has become the core focus of the current capital market.
According to data compiled by Woofun AI, Anthropic's financial performance in the third quarter showed structural differentiation: every $1 invested in computing power expenses could leverage $1.70 in revenue, and this return on investment (ROI) was significantly superior to historical levels. Revenue for the quarter increased 50% year over year to $16.8 billion, and achieved the second consecutive quarter of adjusted profit.
However, compared to the more than 100% increase in revenue between the first and second quarters, the current growth rate has slowed significantly. The Financial Times revealed that the company's operating profit margin was 11%, and the cash flow was steady. This is in stark contrast to the difficult situation in 2025 — computing power expenditure reached 7.33 billion US dollars in that year, revenue was only about 4.6 billion US dollars, and every dollar of computing power investment brought only 0.63 US dollars in revenue. If asset impairment related to early financing was excluded, operating losses exceeded 8 billion US dollars. Second-quarter adjusted profit was not factored into stock-based compensation, and 80% of gross margin did not deduct training costs. Looking at the revenue trajectory, it was $4.8 billion in the first quarter, rising to $11.5 billion in the second quarter, and further increasing to $16.8 billion in the third quarter.
Despite improvements in financial indicators, the market's forecast for Anthropic's full-year revenue scale declined. In the summer, some investors expected their annualized revenue to exceed $100 billion; however, the research firm SemiAnalysis's latest forecast was about $74 billion, up from the $65 billion forecast at the end of July, but it is still far below the forecast at the beginning of the year. The report points to a number of negative factors affecting the company's development. At the investor conference, CEO Dario Amodii and Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao emphasized current profit margins and profitability, but also warned that these metrics may change as the company invests heavily in computing power and biomedical research. In fact, such capital expenditure is already part of long-term planning — Anthropic has promised to invest at least $518 billion over ten years in cloud services, computing power, and infrastructure. The Financial Times notes that rising interest rates may slow the progress of these projects.
The financing, led by Goldman Sachs (GS.US) and Morgan Stanley (MS.US), aims to raise the company's valuation to more than $2 trillion. Currently, this valuation is still based on data privately disclosed by the company to investors, and has not been fully tested by the open market. As the November IPO approaches, the market will be watching closely to see if its high valuation can continue to be supported against the backdrop of a slowdown in revenue growth.