Anthropic signals second straight profitable quarter ahead of Nasdaq IPO

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Highlights

Anthropic reports a second straight quarter of positive adjusted operating income, with Q2 revenue surging 14-fold year-on-year to $11.5bn.
Gross margins top 80% before revenue sharing and training costs, and annualised revenue hits $65bn by July, up from $9bn at the end of 2023.
Anthropic prepares for a potential $2tn+ Nasdaq IPO amid robust growth and rising industry calls to slow AI model development for safety reasons.

Profit outlook and IPO preparations

As first reported by the Financial Times, Anthropic has told a small group of shareholders that its adjusted operating income will be positive for a second consecutive quarter, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The metric excludes items such as stock-based compensation, and the company declines to comment.

People familiar with the figures say Anthropic's gross margins are above 80 per cent before accounting for revenue shared with distribution partners, including Amazon, and the cost of training its models. The company records an adjusted operating profit in the second quarter after revenue rises 14-fold from a year earlier to $11.5bn, while annualised revenue reaches $65bn at the end of July, up from $9bn at the end of last year.

Sustained profitability would mark a significant milestone for the five-year-old company ahead of its planned listing. Anthropic has chosen Nasdaq for an IPO that could value the group at $2tn or more, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, though the expected prospectus has not yet been made public after documents are first shared with a small group of investors for questions.

AI safety debate shapes investor mood

The planned flotation arrives as investors weigh both rapid commercial growth and mounting concern over AI safety, environmental impact and pressure on jobs. Joey Brookhart, an analyst at SemiAnalysis, says that if Anthropic maintains its margins and growth rates, rivals will find it hard to compete because of its access to computing resources.

Brookhart adds that investors forecast Anthropic will finish the year with $120bn in annualised revenue and nearly triple that by the end of 2027. At the same time, assessing the company's trajectory becomes harder as calls grow across the industry to slow or pause development of more powerful models, a move that could reduce training costs but also give competitors more room to catch up.

Chief executive Dario Amodei says in an essay published on Saturday that the industry must slow the pace at which it improves AI model capabilities, and that position is echoed by OpenAI chief Sam Altman and SpaceX chief Elon Musk. People familiar with the talks say employees at rival labs have recently been in unusually close contact over safety measures, driven by security breaches, researcher unease over model capabilities and a belief that President Donald Trump is unlikely to curb the technology.

Our earlier coverage of the U.S. Congress’s push for AI safeguards explained how lawmakers are racing a tight pre-election calendar to advance bipartisan rules for frontier models, including transparency, evaluation requirements, and safety measures. It also highlighted industry warnings—linked to Anthropic and other leading labs—that have added urgency to calls for federal oversight, even as the prospects for a deal remain uncertain.

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