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

By Echo Wang

Oct 20 (Reuters) - Anthropic's net loss widened sharply to $80.7 billion in the first half of this year, in large part due to a rise in the fair value of bonds convertible into shares of the AI startup, according to a draft prospectus for a planned initial public offering that was reviewed by Reuters.

The San Francisco-based company is expected to go public in November and some investors are now weighing a lower valuation of around $1.5 trillion following its latest financial disclosures, Reuters reported last week.

Its first-half loss, widening from a loss of $13 billion a year earlier, included a $72 billion accounting charge reflecting an increase in the estimated value of bonds that could eventually convert into Anthropic shares, rather than cash costs tied to its operations, the document said.

The disclosures underscore the hefty costs of the AI race even as investors give greater scrutiny to whether the vast sums being poured into chips and data centers will generate sufficient returns.

Anthropic has committed to spending at least $518 billion over a decade on cloud services, computing and infrastructure.

The company spent nearly $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure in the first half, up from $2.3 billion a year earlier, the S-1 document showed.

Anthropic did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

FINANCING COSTS

At an investor meeting on October 14, Anthropic told prospective IPO investors that its third-quarter revenue jumped 45% to $16.8 billion from the previous quarter, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

While the figures eased some concerns about the enormous costs of developing AI systems, some investors were disappointed by the slowing sequential growth rate. Revenue had more than doubled from the first quarter to $11.6 billion in the second quarter.

A cooler reception for Anthropic's IPO could weigh on the wider AI market, whose near-term prospects investors see as hinging largely on the share sale's success, ahead of rival OpenAI's potential listing next year.

Reuters reported in September that Anthropic posted a net loss of $42 billion ‌in 2025, with most of that stemming from a similar accounting charge. As Anthropic's valuation climbed, the estimated fair value of those notes tripled year over year.

Excluding the charge, Anthropic posted an operating loss of about $8.1 billion on $4.6 billion of revenue in 2025.

The company has benefited from the popularity of Claude Code, its coding assistant that developers use to write software and build apps.

(Reporting by Echo Wang, Aditya Soni, Jaspreet Singh and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed, Miyoung Kim and Thomas Derpinghaus)