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Anthropic tells investors quarterly revenue up nearly 50% to $16.8bn ahead of IPO

Simon Willison's link-blog post summarizes an FT report on Anthropic's investor day ahead of an IPO. Revenue was about $4.8bn in Q1, $11.5bn in Q2 and $16.8bn in Q3 2026. Q3 brought $1.70 of revenue per $1 of compute spend and an 11% adjusted operating margin excluding stock-based compensation. Anthropic told investors that distillation by rival labs made up 5–7% of revenue and was cut back "materially" in Q3. Willison estimates this means other labs spent over half a billion dollars distilling Anthropic's models in Q2.

TL;DR Anthropic's Q3 2026 revenue hit $16.8bn with an 11% adjusted margin. Distillation by rival labs was 5–7% of revenue before being cut back.

Organisations named here

  • Anthropic
  • Financial Times
  • Simon Willison

Technologies named here

  • Claude Haiku 5.5

Techniques named here

  • Distillation