Anthropic's revenue growth slowed in the third quarter, and financing risks surfaced with nearly 900 billion computing power promises before the IPO

The Zhitong Finance App learned that the revenue growth rate of artificial intelligence startup Anthropic slowed sharply in the third quarter. At the same time, the company indicated in the document that the computing power supporting its rapid expansion faced new risks. Before its high-profile initial public offering (IPO), investors may need to consider one more concern. These disclosures were found in a revised S-1 document submitted on Monday. According to the documents, Anthropic's net loss narrowed, and revenue increased 47% month-on-month to $16.96 billion from the previous quarter, but the growth rate slowed — the company's second-quarter revenue increased 144% month-on-month.

The computing power commitment between Anthropic and partners such as Amazon (AMZN.US) and Google under Alphabet (GOOGL.US) is close to $900 billion, highlighting that its rapid growth depends on large future production capacity, some of which is dependent on financing arrangements beyond the company's control.

“Some of our computing power suppliers and infrastructure partners rely on third-party financing or credit support to procure chips and develop production capacity; if such financing or support becomes unavailable or costs increase, contracted production capacity may be delayed, repriced, cut, or undeliverable,” Anthropic said in the document.

Wall Street is increasingly uneasy about this debt-driven AI construction: record borrowing for data centers, chips, and other infrastructure has widened the spread of technology bonds and forced issuers to offer higher premiums to attract investors.

Anthropic is preparing to officially launch a stock promotion for potential investors next week. After the company revealed financial details at a recent investor event, some current and potential investors are weighing a valuation of $1.5 trillion, which is lower than the previous level of about $2 trillion.

“We'll be watching when this capacity becomes available, when payments begin, and how revenue grows relative to these obligations,” said Evan Schlossman and Willy Lee, heads of venture capital agency Neostellar, when talking about Anthropic's future procurement and leasing commitments.

As Anthropic submitted documents, the rebound in US stocks on Monday subsided, and technology stocks sold off again, highlighting investors' anxiety about the AI boom. However, Amazon's stock price closed higher on the same day, while Alphabet closed down.

Anthropic said that as the share of research and development work carried out by its AI models increases, the company is considering increasing manual supervision of some R&D decisions. The company has previously warned that advanced models may develop unexpected abilities, recognize that they are being assessed, and act in ways that are more difficult to monitor. CEO Dario Amodei has called for model development to slow down.

Financial details revisited

The company anticipates that nearly half of the $895.4 billion in spending commitments related to AI infrastructure will occur before December 31, 2030; approximately $69.8 billion of this year will expire within 12 months after September 30 this year.

Anthropic revealed that the quarter generated an additional $5 billion in computing power costs, dragging down efficiency improvements and reducing revenue per dollar of computing power compared to the previous quarter.

“I don't think these results are worrying, but I do expect that some of the pressure on growth and profit margins will be reflected in the final IPO valuation,” said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, who focuses on IPO research and ETFs.

As of September 30, over the past 12 months, there were more than 11,900 customers contributing at least $100,000 in revenue to Anthropic, up from over 1,500 at the end of 2025.

The net loss narrowed to $232.9 billion from $66.3 billion in the previous quarter. The company recorded an operating loss of US$567 million in the third quarter, compared with operating profit of US$974 million in the second quarter.

Anthropic's operating losses reflect the company's operating costs, including computing power infrastructure and research investments; its net loss also includes non-operating items associated with bonds that can be converted into shares of the company.