Anthropic logged net loss of over $80 billion in first half of 2026, WSJ reports

Oct 20 : AI startup Anthropic recorded a net loss of more than $80 billion in the first half of this year, including $72 billion in accounting charges, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing a draft initial public offering prospectus.

That compares to a net loss of $13 billion during the same period a year earlier, according to the report. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The vast majority of this year's net loss, $72 billion, resulted from accounting charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments the company issued to raise funding, the Journal report said.

The report comes as investors sharpen scrutiny of AI companies' finances as they pour money into chips, data centers and computing power needed to develop and operate increasingly powerful models.

Anthropic's third-quarter revenue rose 45 per cent to $16.8 billion from the previous quarter, Reuters reported last week, citing an investor who attended a pre-IPO meeting with Anthropic leadership in San Francisco.

Reuters reported first in September that Anthropic posted a net loss of $42 billion ‌in 2025 and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in coming years.

Revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, even as the company lost more than $8 billion on an operating basis, excluding writedowns of various liabilities mostly tied to previous fundraising, Reuters has reported citing the documents.