Anthropic's Q3 Growth Slowed to 46% Ahead of IPO, While an Unnamed Early Backer Predicts $2.4 Trillion Trading Value

Since Anthropic walked investors through its third-quarter numbers at its San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday, Oct. 14, the details of that meeting have filled in, and the picture is more mixed than the headline revenue figure suggests.

Revenue for July through September was $16.8 billion, up roughly 45% to 46% from about $11.5 billion to $11.6 billion in the second quarter. The number is large, but it also marks a sharp slowdown. Revenue more than doubled from the first quarter, which was about $4.7 billion, to the second.

What Anthropic told investors

CEO Dario Amodei and CFO Krishna Rao led the presentations. The company said it was profitable on an adjusted basis for a second straight quarter, with positive adjusted free cash flow.

It cited an adjusted gross margin of about 85% and an adjusted operating margin above 11%. It also said every dollar spent on computing brought in $1.70 of revenue.

Adjusted figures strip out costs the company chooses to exclude. On standard accounting measures, Anthropic lost $42 billion in 2025 on $4.6 billion of revenue. The gap between the two sets of numbers is what public-market investors will be probing once a full filing is in their hands.

Run-rate expectations diverge

The Financial Times reported that the latest quarter fell short of some investors' hopes. Annualized revenue, which projects recent sales over a full year, is now reportedly expected to finish 2026 below $100 billion. Several backers had anticipated more than $100 billion.

Research firm SemiAnalysis puts the current annualized figure at about $74 billion, up from about $65 billion in late July.

A different projection came out of the room itself. Attendees at the investor meeting projected a year-end run rate of more than $110 billion, according to Crypto Briefing. That is an attendee projection, not a company result, and it sits on the opposite side of the $100 billion line from the Financial Times account.

The valuation debate

Anthropic is reported to be targeting a valuation of as much as $2 trillion. It raised $65 billion at $965 billion in a Series H round in May. A $2 trillion price would be roughly double that mark.

The roadshow is expected to begin the week of Nov. 9, according to Crypto Briefing. If that holds, trading could start before Thanksgiving, on Nov. 26. Anthropic has not confirmed a pricing date or final valuation. The company is reported to be aiming for a listing after the U.S. midterm elections, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reportedly leading the deal.

One long-term backer told Fortune this week that he expects shares to price at about $1.8 trillion and trade at $2.3 trillion to $2.4 trillion once they change hands. He asked not to be named. His forecast is a personal prediction, not a company figure or confirmed terms.

His case rests on enterprise focus. Anthropic gets about 80% of its revenue from enterprise customers, and he called it the premier foundation-model builder. He said it has "a little more soul than OpenAI" and called Amodei "pretty principled about the kind of company he wants."

He also expects Anthropic to reach big profitability before SpaceX. SpaceX priced its June IPO at roughly $1.8 trillion, closed its first day at a $2.1 trillion market cap and is now hovering around $2.03 trillion, according to Fortune.

The backer is arguing his own position. The slowing growth rate and the profit gap on standard accounting measures sit against that optimism.

Risk language and spending

Breitbart, citing CNBC, reported that about 80 pages of a 261-page filing deal with AI risks, including catastrophic or existential risk to humanity. It also described possible self-preserving behaviors in AI systems, such as resisting shutdown or concealing information. Only 48 pages cover the business itself, it said.

The same account says Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion on cloud computing and other infrastructure over the coming year. That figure has not been corroborated elsewhere.

Dan Ives, a partner at Yorkville Ives, told CNBC that the market reaction to Amodei's proposal for AI companies to pace development was "pretty resoundingly negative." He called it a "head scratcher." Ives argued that if Anthropic and OpenAI slowed down, "China would just accelerate and win." He also said "there's some regulatory capture going on."

Amodei's essay says pacing "does not mean halting model training or technical progress." It calls for companies to take adequate time to align and safeguard their models and for third-party evaluators to confirm that.

What comes next

Whether the adjusted profit holds up under scrutiny is the key test. Investors will compare those margins with standard accounting results once Anthropic's full filing is public. That comparison, along with whether the Nov. 9 roadshow date holds, will shape how close to $2 trillion the pricing lands.