Abstract:
According to the media citing a draft IPO prospectus, Anthropic suffered a net loss of more than US$80 billion in the first half of this year; the company also stated that it may invest up to US$750 billion in the next few years to obtain more computing power.
The company's loss increased sharply from $13 billion a year earlier, mainly due to a $72 billion accounting charge related to changes in the value of financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise capital.
These data highlight the high costs of the artificial intelligence race; at the same time, investors are increasingly cautiously assessing whether the huge amounts of money companies invest in chips and data centers can bring about corresponding returns.
In the first half of this year, Anthropic’s revenue jumped to US$16.3 billion from US$1.1 billion in the same period last year; at the same time, its spending on AI infrastructure increased nearly fourfold to nearly US$9 billion.
The company has benefited greatly from the widespread use of its programming assistant "Claude Code" - a tool that developers use to write software and build applications.
However, multiple people familiar with the matter revealed that after attending Anthropic’s Investor Day event last week, some existing and potential investors began to consider lowering the valuation of the artificial intelligence company after reviewing the company’s latest financial disclosures.
Three of the people familiar with the matter said that investors attending the event in San Francisco discussed a valuation of about $1.5 trillion; this was a significant reduction from the roughly $2 trillion market estimate for the company's November share sale.
Anthropic disclosed to investors at the meeting that its third-quarter revenue increased 45% from the previous quarter to $16.8 billion; in addition, the company had achieved profitability on an adjusted basis in the quarter.
If Anthropic’s initial public offering (IPO) is poorly received, it could have a negative impact on the entire AI market. Against the backdrop that rival OpenAI may go public next year, investors generally believe that the near-term prospects of the AI market depend to a large extent on the success of Anthropic's share sale.
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