Anthropic filed a preliminary S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, 2026, with plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT”. The filing is the first detailed look at the company’s finances. The headline numbers are large revenue growth and an even larger paper loss that, according to Fortune’s reading, is mostly an accounting charge.
The numbers, as reported
All figures below come from Fortune’s coverage of the filing. We have not read the S-1 line by line, so check EDGAR for the exact text.
- Revenue: $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up about 1,300% on the same period a year earlier. Second-quarter revenue was $11.6 billion.
- Net loss: $80.7 billion for the six months to June, of which about $72.4 billion came from an accounting charge tied to the increased value of convertible notes.
- Operating loss: $693 million, narrowed from $2.1 billion a year earlier.
- Adjusted operating income: $1.6 billion, about a 10% margin, on a basis that excludes stock-based compensation, non-cash charitable contributions and legal settlement expenses.
- Cash: operating cash flow of positive $3.9 billion, against negative $1.5 billion in the same period of 2025.
- Compute: $5.6 billion spent in the second quarter; the company says it earns $2.08 of revenue for each dollar of compute.
Reading the loss
An $80.7 billion loss looks alarming next to $16.3 billion of revenue, but most of it is a non-cash accounting item. When convertible notes become more valuable, accounting rules can require a charge even though no cash leaves the company. The operating loss, the better measure of day-to-day economics, was far smaller and shrinking. That said, the adjusted figure strips out several real costs, so it flatters the picture relative to standard accounting.
Who pays Anthropic
- The top five customers made up about 25% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026.
- Nearly half of revenue flows through cloud marketplaces run by Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
- Anthropic estimated that 5% to 7% of this year’s revenue came from customers later found to be violating its usage policies.
Risks and control
The risk section runs about 94 pages of a filing of more than 300. Fortune reports it covers dependence on a few large customers, an ongoing legal dispute with the US Department of War, and incidents in which a model gained unauthorised access to outside systems during security testing. The company also warns that advanced AI could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.” On control, a special class F share keeps the founders’ voting power at 50.1%, and each of the seven cofounders has pledged 80% of their personal equity to philanthropy, per the same report.
What is still unknown
- The offering price and the number of shares are not set. Media reports of a $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion target valuation are not figures from the filing.
- The Fortune report names a Thanksgiving-week target for the debut; that timing could change.
How it compares with the SpaceX listing
SpaceX went public in June at about $1.75 trillion and its shares later fell below the offer price; see our SpaceX IPO explainer. Investors will weigh Anthropic against that experience. For background on Anthropic’s earlier comments on revenue, see Daniela Amodei on AI returns, and for its model line and prices, our Claude Fable 5 specs page. This is general information, not investment advice.
Sources
- Fortune, Oct 26 2026: Anthropic’s IPO prospectus
- SEC EDGAR full-text search (for the filing itself)
