Anthropic (ANT) Q3 2026 earnings review
Anthropic nears $17bn a quarter, but computing promises exceed $850bn
Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models, kept growing in the September quarter but reported no profit figure for it. By our math revenue reached about $17 billion, up 47% from June and twelve times a year earlier. The June quarter had already brought the first operating profit, because computing costs fell below revenue.
| Revenue, September quarter (by our math) | about $17 billion up 47% from the June quarter |
|---|---|
| Operating profit, June quarter (latest disclosed) | $974 million a $1.2 billion loss a year earlier |
| Large customers, paying $100,000 or more a year | more than 11,900 more than 950 a year earlier |
| Outlook | No numbers given the filing says growth will slow and margins may compress |
⚖️ Verdict: 🟢 Bullish
The story got better because the September quarter showed demand still rising at a pace that keeps computing costs below revenue, on top of the first profit in June. The bad news: by our math Anthropic has promised more than $850 billion for computing against $132 billion of cash and investments, and growth from the previous quarter has halved since June.
The question now is whether growth of about 47% a quarter is the new pace or the start of a slide. If demand keeps rising at that rate, the ordered capacity fills; if the slowdown continues as the filing warns, the contracts become a fixed bill against a smaller business. The first quarterly report as a listed company will show the September quarter's costs and settle how much of the revenue reached profit.
🐂 Bull Case
Revenue Rose Almost Half Again in Three Months
The filing leaves September-quarter revenue blank, but it says the quarter brought "86 times" the revenue of the December 2024 quarter, which was $197 million. By our math that puts revenue near $17 billion, and two other ratios in the filing land within a few percent of it.
- Revenue, September quarter: about $16.9 billion by our math, up 47% from June
- Revenue, twelve months to September: about $35 billion by our math, roughly thirteen times a year earlier
- Models released since April: over 80% of the quarter's revenue
- Five largest customers: 21% of the quarter's revenue, from 36% in March
This matters because the growth came as the business widened, not from a few large accounts. Each of the five largest customers still set a record, Anthropic said, but their combined share fell. And the newest models carried most of the revenue, so each release is still enlarging the market rather than replacing the old one.
The caution is the pace. Growth from the previous quarter was 144% in June and about 47% in September by our math, and the filing itself says it expects growth to slow as the base gets larger. A quarter at half the earlier pace is still enormous, but the direction has changed.
What to watch: the exact September-quarter revenue in the first public quarterly report. A figure near $17 billion would confirm the pace, and the cost lines beside it will show whether the June quarter's profit held.
Computing Costs Fell Below Half of Revenue
Anthropic rents most of its computing power from Amazon, Google and Microsoft under contracts signed a year or more ahead. A year earlier that bill exceeded revenue, so every sale lost money before Anthropic paid a single salary. The filing's cost lines stop at June, the latest quarter it reports in full.
In the June quarter computing and data-centre costs came to 48% of revenue, 129 percentage points less than a year earlier. Revenue grew almost fifteenfold while that cost line only quadrupled, and the AI developer reported its first operating profit.
- Computing and infrastructure, June quarter: $5.6 billion, up 300% from a year earlier
- Operating profit, June quarter: $974 million, an 8% margin
- A year earlier: a $1.2 billion operating loss, minus 152% of revenue
This matters because capacity arrives in large blocks, so costs are fixed in the short run and revenue decides the margin. Anthropic credits better training methods and running Claude on four chip families. But it expects short-term capacity purchases "to increase in the near term and to in turn compress our operating margin".
What to watch: computing costs as a share of revenue for the September quarter, which the filing omits. A share still below 50% would mean the new capacity found customers as fast as it arrived.
Large Customers Grew Tenfold in a Year
Anthropic counts a customer as large when it pays at least $100,000 over twelve months. That group matters because it brings in about three quarters of revenue, and it is the measure the filing uses for enterprise adoption.
- Large customers: more than 11,900 at the end of September, from more than 950 a year earlier
- Customers paying $1 million or more: more than 1,900
- Customers paying $10 million or more: about 250
- Existing customers' spending: about nine times a year earlier, by Anthropic's retention measure
This matters because there is room left. A Fortune 500 customer spent on average under 0.1% of its costs with Anthropic in the September quarter, the filing says, and over half of large customers now use both the platform and a packaged app.
What to watch: the count of large customers at the end of December. A count still rising by thousands each quarter would mean enterprise demand is widening rather than filling up.
Cheaper Models Pulled in More Spending
Each new Claude model does a task for less money, because Anthropic cuts prices and the model needs fewer steps. In September it released Opus 5.5, which "reduced customer costs per task by approximately 40%", and Fable 5.1, which "reduced the cost of typical workloads by approximately 25%".
Lower prices have not cut revenue. After Opus 4.5 launched last November at a lower price, quarter-on-quarter revenue growth went from 48% to 132%, and many customers have since moved to Opus 5.5, the filing says.
The money sits in the agent products. A Claude Enterprise user without Claude Code, the coding agent, spent under $75 a month in the September quarter. The top 5% of Claude Code users spent about twenty times that.
What to watch: revenue growth in the December quarter, the first full period after September's price cuts. Revenue rising faster than prices fell would mean each cut widens the market.
🐻 Bear Case
Computing Commitments Exceed Cash Six Times Over
Anthropic says its computing efficiency "can provide financial resilience if demand is lower or arrives later than we anticipate". Its own tables disagree, because it must pay for most ordered capacity "regardless of actual usage".
At the end of June Anthropic had $265.6 billion of fixed purchase commitments and $321.4 billion of leases not yet started. It has signed roughly $266 billion more since. By our math that is over $850 billion against $131.7 billion of cash and investments.
- Broadcom chip leases: $161.2 billion over five years
- SpaceXAI: up to $120.5 billion, or about $3.1 billion a month once delivered
- Google cloud: at least $114.5 billion through July 2033
- Bank credit line: raised in September to $15 billion, with a $5 billion minimum cash covenant
This matters because revenue is mostly pay-as-you-go usage, while the contracts run up to twenty years with partners who are also its investors and rivals. The filing expects "significant net cash used in operating and investing activities for the foreseeable future", so the cash inflow of the first half will not last.
What to watch: the share of commitments due within twelve months, which the filing leaves blank, and operating cash flow once new capacity starts billing. Cash flow still positive through that ramp would mean usage keeps pace with the hardware.
Some Revenue Comes From Customers Breaking the Rules
Not all of Anthropic's revenue is revenue it wants to keep. Customers it later found breaking its usage policy or commercial terms generated "approximately 5% to 7% of our revenue" in the first nine months of 2026. On about $33 billion of nine-month revenue, that is near $2 billion by our math.
Anthropic stepped up detection and enforcement in August and September and says the share will fall as it cuts those accounts off. Their revenue "would not be expected to recur", so part of the headline growth is already leaving. Terminated customers re-register under new accounts, the filing adds, so the clean-up will be uneven.
What to watch: revenue growth in the December quarter, the first full period after the enforcement push. Growth that holds near the September pace would mean the rule-breaking revenue was small next to legitimate demand.
Share Issuance Will Dilute Holders After Listing
Anthropic pays staff largely in restricted stock units, stock awards that only vest once it lists. It has recorded no expense for them yet, because accounting rules treated a listing as not probable. The listing changes that, and the filing lists what follows.
- Catch-up charge at listing: $2.9 billion
- Still to come: $23.7 billion over about 2.1 years
- Other equity awards not yet expensed: $3.1 billion
- New grants approved since June: $5.8 billion
- Public benefit fund: 5% of fully diluted shares now, with up to 2% more at each future milestone
- Amazon's convertible notes: $6.2 billion, converting into about 1.84 billion non-voting shares
By our math the stock expense items alone come to about $35 billion, roughly twice the revenue of the first half. The weighted share count had already risen 13% in a year before any of them. The donation-matching programme is a live example: it charged $2.0 billion in the September quarter, about 12% of that quarter's revenue by our math. That one charge is twice the June quarter's operating profit, and Anthropic issued 28 million shares in October to settle it.
What to watch: the diluted share count and stock-based pay charge in the first public quarterly report. A charge near $3 billion above the usual run rate would show the catch-up has landed.
Regulators Have Already Taken Models Offline
Government work brings Anthropic about 1% of revenue, but government action reaches the rest. In June the Commerce Department put worldwide export restrictions on its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, and the company switched them off for every customer until the restrictions lifted.
The dispute with the Department of War continues. A district court ruled in August that the department's supply-chain-risk designation was "retaliatory acts meant to punish us for speech protected under the First Amendment", but a divided appeals court upheld the designation in September. In October the Federal Trade Commission sent a demand for information about product safety.
What to watch: the full appeals court's decision on rehearing. A ruling that keeps the designation would bar every US military contractor from doing business with Anthropic.
👓 Other Themes
Founders and a Trust Control the Board
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation that must weigh the public interest alongside shareholders. Its Long-Term Benefit Trust, five trustees who hold no stock, elects a majority of the board through a single Class T share. A single Class F share held by the seven co-founders carries 50.1% of votes on everything else, and new share issues never dilute it. Class A holders cannot outvote either.
How We Filled In the Blank September Quarter
The S-1 is a draft, so it blanks September-quarter revenue, costs and Run-Rate Revenue, its annualised recent sales. Three disclosures let us estimate revenue: the "86 times" ratio, a twelve-month growth rate of about 1,200%, and revenue per employee of over $6.6 million across 5,300 staff. The three land between $16.7 billion and $17.3 billion. Costs and profit for the quarter cannot be derived.
💲 Other KPIs
Every cost line except computing shrank relative to sales in the June quarter. Staff costs fell to 16% of revenue from 41% a year earlier. Stock pay is two-thirds of that line. Sales, marketing and partner fees, mostly the cut Anthropic pays cloud marketplaces, went the other way, to 18% of revenue. Revenue per employee reached $6.6 million over twelve months, from $1.4 million.
Unpaid customer bills reached $5.8 billion at the end of June, from $909 million in December. Revenue over the same six months rose less than fivefold, so bills grew faster than sales. By our math customers now take about 46 days to pay, from 41 days in December. Cloud marketplaces that collect on Anthropic's behalf owe 58% of the balance.
Cash from operations turned positive for the first time: an inflow of $3.9 billion in the first half against an outflow of $1.5 billion a year earlier. Customers paying ahead helped, as deferred revenue rose by $1.4 billion. After $482 million of equipment purchases it still generated cash, but Anthropic says the data-centre build-out will push operating and investing cash negative for years.
First disclosure of remaining performance obligations, the revenue customers have committed to under contracts not yet delivered, so there is no trend yet. About three quarters, or $8.1 billion by our math, falls due within twelve months. That is less than one quarter of revenue at the June pace, so most of Anthropic's sales remain pay-as-you-go usage that customers can cut at any time.
❓ Key Questions
What exactly was September-quarter revenue?
The filing leaves the figure blank but says it was 86 times the December 2024 quarter, near $17 billion by our math. The exact number, and the growth from June, decides whether the slowdown from the spring pace is a step or a trend.
Did the September quarter stay profitable?
The only cost the filing gives for the quarter is a $2.0 billion donation-matching charge, twice the June quarter's operating profit by our math. Computing costs, staff costs and operating profit for the quarter are all missing.
How much of the computing commitments falls due within a year?
The filing blanks the twelve-month figure. SpaceXAI alone runs about $3.1 billion a month once delivered, so the near-term bill against $131.7 billion of cash and investments is the most important number the draft omits.
How much revenue came from the rule-breaking customers?
Anthropic estimates 5% to 7% of nine-month revenue, near $2 billion by our math, came from customers it is now cutting off. A dollar figure by quarter, and the growth rate without them, would show how much of the headline growth is durable.
What is Run-Rate Revenue as of October 31?
The prospectus defines the metric but leaves the value blank. Set against the September-quarter revenue, it would show whether the holiday slowdown the company describes, spending down about 20% over two weeks last year, is starting earlier.