anthropic's draft s-1: $80.7b h1 loss on $16.3b revenue

Felix Laurent 21 Oct 2026 2 min read

big tech

anthropic recorded an $80.7b net loss in the first half of 2026, up from $13b in the same period a year earlier, according to a draft ipo prospectus. about $72b of that loss is an accounting charge tied to convertible notes and other instruments the company issued to raise money, the journal reports. revenue for the six months ended june 30 was $16.3b, against $1.1b a year earlier. anthropic did not respond to reuters, and reuters says it could not immediately verify the report.

what the draft shows

the filing is not public. every figure in this article comes from reporting on the draft, not from a document we have read.

about a fifth of h1 revenue came from two customers, and the draft says a significant share of future revenue is expected to come from a limited number of customers, according to the journal.

where the loss comes from

most of the $80.7b is not cash spent. the journal attributes about $72b to changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments anthropic used to raise money; as the company's valuation rises, those instruments are marked up and the difference is booked as a loss.

the same pattern showed up in the full-year numbers. reuters, which reviewed an earlier draft in september, reported a 2025 net loss of $42b, about $34b of it a non-cash charge, and an operating loss of $8.06b. the h1 2026 operating loss has not been reported.

at an investor day, anthropic said third-quarter revenue rose 45% from the previous quarter to $16.8b and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis in that quarter, reuters reports.

the compute bill

the draft lists about $450b in cloud computing agreements running seven to ten years, most of them noncancelable, the journal reports. counting deals still under negotiation, anthropic could spend up to $750b on computing capacity in the coming years.

the figures depend on what is counted. reporting on the september draft put the floor at $518b over a decade with six partners, about 80% payable regardless of use, including $111.1b with google, $110b with amazon and $31.4b with microsoft, plus about $161.2b in broadcom-related equipment leases, reuters reported. reporter anissa gardizy, in her own post on the latest draft, puts planned compute spend at more than $600b once chip leases are added; the gap to $750b is not explained in the reporting.

for scale: the almost $9b spent on infrastructure in h1 2026 is about 2% of the $450b already committed.

what is still missing

anthropic confidentially submitted a draft s-1 to the sec on june 1 and has not published it. until the public filing lands, every number above is a reading of a draft by reporters, and drafts change before they go public. renaissance capital expects the filing as soon as october 23.

the price is open too. three people told reuters that some investors at the investor day discussed a valuation of around $1.5t, down from the roughly $2t previously expected for a november share sale.