Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate exceeds $65 billion ahead of IPO

Looking back just one year ago, it would have been hard to imagine Anthropic’s revenue curve rising so sharply.

This morning, according to Bloomberg, Anthropic disclosed to investors that its annualized revenue run rate (ARR) had reached $65 billion as of the end of July this year. Calculated at an annualized level exceeding $9 billion by the end of 2025, this figure has more than septupled in just a few months.

Meanwhile, Anthropic's preliminary revenue for its most recently completed quarter (Q2) exceeded $11.5 billion. This compares to $787 million in the same period last year, meaning revenue in the latest quarter reached approximately 14.6 times the level of the same period last year.

For an AI company that was once widely regarded as a challenger to OpenAI, this may be its most aggressive acceleration in commercialization to date.

It should be noted that $6.5 billion does not represent the actual revenue Anthropic has earned over the past year.

The metric used here is "Annualized Revenue Run Rate." In simple terms, it estimates the total revenue the company would generate over a year if its current revenue level were maintained. This metric is particularly useful for observing rapidly growing companies, as it reflects current business changes more quickly than revenue from a completed fiscal year.

Anthropic's current growth rate is now very evident.

By the end of 2025, its annualized revenue run rate had just exceeded $9 billion; by May of this year, it had surpassed $47 billion; and as of the end of July, it had further reached $65 billion.

In other words, over just two months, Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate increased by approximately 38%.

Over a longer time horizon, the change is even more pronounced. According to data disclosed by Bloomberg, Anthropic’s full-year revenue for 2025 is estimated at approximately $10 billion. Currently, its annualized revenue based on the latest pace has already surpassed six times that amount.

Revenue growth is also beginning to reflect in profitability.

Anthropic's latest completed quarter saw preliminary revenue exceed $11.5 billion, a significant increase from $787 million in the same period in 2025. Meanwhile, the company recorded positive adjusted operating profit for the quarter—a particularly notable development for frontier model companies still in the midst of heavy compute investments.

Over the past few years, the growth story of large model companies has often been accompanied by another side: training costs, inference costs, data center investments, and talent expenses have all risen in tandem. Rapid revenue growth does not mean losses will disappear quickly.

Anthropic has begun to show positive adjusted operating profit, at least indicating that its scale expansion is gradually demonstrating operating leverage.

Behind Anthropic's revenue surge, an unavoidable factor is the enterprise market, particularly in programming and complex knowledge work scenarios.

Claude was initially seen primarily as a direct competitor to ChatGPT. However, over the past year, Anthropic has made a clear shift in its commercialization strategy, increasingly integrating deeply into real enterprise workflows. Claude Code is the most prominent example of this approach.

Developers can directly have Claude read code repositories, modify files, execute commands, troubleshoot issues, and continuously complete extended software engineering workflows. As Coding Agent is adopted at scale within enterprises, model interactions have shifted from occasional, one-off conversations to continuous, token-intensive workflows.

For model companies, the two usage models generate completely different revenues.

A single Q&A interaction may invoke the model for just a few seconds; whereas a software engineering agent that runs for tens of minutes or even hours may repeatedly read context, invoke tools, modify code, and revalidate results. This also explains why enterprise-grade agents are rapidly becoming a revenue engine for leading model companies.

Based on the data currently disclosed, Anthropic is one of the most apparent beneficiaries of this trend.

Bloomberg previously reported that OpenAI's recent annualized revenue run rate has exceeded $40 billion. If comparing this metric alone, Anthropic's newly disclosed $65 billion is significantly higher.

However, these two figures should still be compared with caution, as different companies may use varying methodologies to calculate annualized revenue run rate, including differences in revenue recognition and how enterprise contracts are accounted for.

The timing of this figure is equally delicate. Anthropic is on the eve of its IPO.

According to a previous report by the Financial Times, Anthropic's investors expect the company to go public as early as October this year, with an IPO valuation of $2 trillion or more.

If Anthropic lists at this valuation, it will surpass SpaceX, which went public earlier this year, to become the highest-valued IPO in history.

For Anthropic, which is poised to enter the capital markets, a $65 billion annualized revenue run rate is clearly a crucial advantage.

AI companies have enjoyed extremely high valuations in recent years, but capital markets will ultimately return to a few very traditional questions: How much revenue is actually being generated, how long can growth be sustained, when will profits emerge, and can massive investments in computing power be converted into sustained cash flow?

Anthropic was long seen as a follower behind OpenAI. Now, it has demonstrated to potential investors that things have changed.

Model capabilities remain important, but market penetration in enterprise markets, revenue growth rates, and profitability are gaining increasing weight.

Anthropic is also not facing a smooth environment. In June this year, the company temporarily restricted access to its advanced models, Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, due to government regulatory requirements, and only restored access after approximately two weeks of negotiations. Even so, the company’s latest revenue figures continue to grow rapidly, making this revenue trajectory all the more noteworthy.

Reference link:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-17/anthropic-revenue-run-rate-surpasses-65-billion-ahead-of-ipo?srnd=phx-technology

https://www.ft.com/content/840ac156-af1c-4a82-b260-ae791072fcfa?syn-25a6b1a6=1

This article is from the WeChat public account "Machine Heart" (ID: almosthuman2014), authored by someone focused on large AI models.