Anthropic’s revenue rose 45 percent to nearly $17 billion, but some investors are now considering a valuation of about $1.5 trillion rather than the anticipated $2 trillion. That’s a $500 billion gap in expectations as the AI lab prepares for its widely anticipated public offering.
The question isn’t whether the business is shrinking. It’s whether revenue is growing fast enough to support the price investors had expected to put on it. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic had disclosed the revenue increase to private investors. In Business Insider’s assessment, the third-quarter figure looks impressive on paper but falls far short of the growth needed to justify that 13-figure valuation target.
Following the announcement, Reuters reported that some investors had begun weighing the lower valuation of roughly $1.5 trillion. That isn’t a settled IPO price, just a number some investors are weighing.
Some public reactions were much blunter. “Not good enough,” the social media account belonging to market research blog Geiger Capital wrote in a post. “It’s over.”
AI researcher and critic Gary Marcus pointed to how much growth the valuation would require. “Anyone remember this?” he posted alongside a screenshot of a headline stating that Anthropic would need about $190-200 billion in revenue by 2028 to justify its valuation. “They ain’t gonna come close.” That’s Marcus’s prediction, not an established outcome.
The revenue disclosure also follows a dispute over what counts as profitability. Nearly a month earlier, Anthropic had told investors it was profitable. But as Futurism reported, that claim relied on a special accounting method that excluded most of its expenses. Under that measure, profitability says little about whether sales are growing fast enough.
The losses look far worse. A leaked IPO filing reported in late September revealed that Anthropic generated $4.6 billion in revenue across 2025 while losing $42 billion. Futurism argues that investor concerns are understandable given the increasingly difficult task of justifying the enormous cost of the AI buildout. It also argues that Anthropic’s ability to accelerate revenue growth matters to the broader tech sector.
Anthropic’s spending commitments extend well beyond the IPO: it has committed to approximately $518 billion in AI infrastructure over the next decade. Futurism’s verdict is that explosive revenue growth was already needed. The valuation debate now hinges on whether Anthropic can grow revenue fast enough to justify its IPO ambitions while carrying those losses and infrastructure commitments.
