Anthropic's amended S-1: $17B in Q3 revenue, a slide back to an operating loss and $895B in compute commitments
What's the deal? Anthropic filed an amended Form S-1 with the SEC on 2 November, adding third-quarter numbers to the IPO prospectus it published last week. Revenue for the three months to 30 September was $16.96B, up about 1,127% on a year earlier and up from $11.56B in the second quarter. Revenue for the first nine months reached $33.24B, against roughly $2.5B in the same period of 2025, CNBC and Axios reported.
Growth is slowing, and margins slipped: Quarter-on-quarter growth fell to about 47%, from 144% in Q2 and 132% in Q1. Anthropic posted a $567M operating loss in Q3, one quarter after its first operating profit of $974M. When demand ran past the capacity it books 12 to 18 months ahead, it bought about $5B of short-term compute that it says "currently costs significantly more" than its long-term contracts, which cut revenue per dollar of compute for the first time. A $2B non-cash charge tied to a donation-matching programme also weighed on the quarter, according to Yahoo Finance. The Q3 net loss was $23.29B, down from $66.3B in Q2; most of the $104B nine-month net loss reflects changes in the fair value of convertible notes and derivative liabilities rather than operations.
The $895B compute bill: For the first time the filing totals Anthropic's purchase commitments and leases: about $895.4B, "substantially all of which is related to compute and infrastructure". About $69.8B falls due in the 12 months after 30 September, $447.5B by the end of 2030 and the rest between 2031 and 2045, Reuters reported. Broadcom tops the list with about $161B in equipment leases, followed by Google at about $121B (up from $114.5B in the first filing), SpaceX's AI unit at up to $120.5B and Amazon at $110B. A further $125B to $150B of planned Google chips and more than $20B with AMD are not counted, because those deals carry no fixed dollar amount.
The balance sheet and customers: Anthropic held $131.8B in cash and short-term investments at the end of September, so its committed spend is close to seven times its cash. It counted more than 11,900 customers generating at least $100,000 in trailing 12-month revenue, up from more than 1,500 at the end of 2025. Reuters reported that some current and prospective investors now value the company at about $1.5T, down from roughly $2T.
The signal: The amended filing shows both sides of the frontier AI trade in one document: revenue still compounding at a pace no software company has matched, and a compute bill locked in for two decades that has to be paid whether or not that growth holds. With the IPO expected in the coming weeks, investors now have the numbers to argue about.
Read more: CNBC, Reuters via Investing.com, Axios, Yahoo Finance, New York Post
Image credit: AFP via Getty Images / New York Post
