Anthropic recorded a net loss of $80.7 billion in the six months ending 30 June 2026, and $72 billion of it resulted from accounting charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments the company issued to raise funding, The Wall Street Journal reported on 20 October 2026. The figures come from a draft initial public offering prospectus viewed by the Journal. Anthropic declined to comment.
Anthropic generated around $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half, up from $1.1 billion in the year-earlier period, and spent nearly $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure, according to the draft prospectus as reported by the Journal. Below are the figures, the compute commitments and the risk factors the Journal reported, and how they connect to this month’s IPO coverage.
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The key insight: As we read it, the Journal’s figures split Anthropic’s first half into two stories: an $80.7 billion net loss of which $72 billion resulted from accounting charges tied to its financing instruments, and an operating business with around $16.3 billion in revenue and nearly $9 billion of compute spending.
Update, 26 Oct: Anthropic’s S-1 shows the filed numbers.Anthropic’s S-1, filed publicly on 26 October, confirms the draft figures the Journal reported: a net loss of $80,748 million for the six months ended 30 June 2026, of which $72,388 million was the change in fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs, on revenue of $16,286 million and compute and infrastructure expense of $8,945 million. The operating loss for the half was $693 million. More: our S-1 piece.
The Journal said the net loss of more than $80 billion “largely reflects an accounting adjustment related to financing agreements.” That compares with a net loss of $13 billion in the same period a year earlier, and with the $42 billion Anthropic lost in all of 2025, the Journal reported.
On costs, the Journal reported that Anthropic spent nearly $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure in the first half, up from $2.3 billion in the same six months of 2025. That is more than the $7.3 billion it spent in all of 2025, a year in which it generated $4.6 billion in revenue, according to the Journal.
Anthropic’s first half of 2026 (six months ended 30 June), from its draft IPO prospectus as reported by The Wall Street Journal on 20 October 2026: a net loss of $80.7 billion, of which $72 billion resulted from accounting charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments; revenue of around $16.3 billion, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier; and nearly $9 billion spent on computing capacity and infrastructure.
Bloomberg’s own post promoting its article: it says Anthropic is preparing for a massive IPO, and that fierce competition, the threat of mass unemployment and the prospect of sweeping regulation make it an unusually risky bet. Our Update above quotes the article’s free opening.
The Compute Bill
The company is on the hook to pay around $450 billion in cloud computing agreements over the next seven to ten years, and the bulk of these deals are noncancelable, the Journal reported. Anthropic plans to spend $111 billion on Googlecloud computing contracts, $110 billion with Amazon Web Services and $31 billion on Microsoft, “regardless of actual usage,” according to the Journal. (Update, 28 October 2026: the S-1 Anthropic filed on 26 October gives at least about $114.5 billion with Google, at least $110.0 billion with Amazon and at least $44.9 billion with Microsoft.)
The Journal said the firm also agreed to spend up to $86 billion renting Nvidia chips from Nscale and Lambda through 2033 and 2034, respectively. Including its more than $160 billion obligation to lease Google chips in a deal with Broadcom, Anthropic’s future infrastructure costs top $600 billion, the Journal reported, and further deals under negotiation could raise its commitments by as much as $150 billion.
The company has signaled that it could potentially spend $750 billion in the coming years on obtaining more computing capacity, including deals it is still negotiating, the Journal reported. Anthropic said it has sought access to more capacity than “those partners were willing to provide” and that they increasingly see it as a competitor, according to the prospectus as reported by the Journal.
Update (23 Oct): Bloomberg Economics on the pitch. In an analysis published on 23 October, Bloomberg’s Tom Orlik, Michael Deng and Dongmiao Zhang wrote that the company “warns its technology could threaten jobs and even humanity. For investors, those risks create a strange reason to buy in.” They wrote that a September report from Anthropic “said AI could take US unemployment close to 12%,” and that the company’s own prospectus “reportedly agrees” on the risks, citing the Financial Times. We read only the opening of the analysis; its valuation arithmetic is behind the paywall.
Customers and Risk Factors
Around one-fifth of the $16.3 billion in first-half revenue came from just two customers, the Journal reported. Anthropic expects a “significant portion” of its revenue will come from a “limited number of customers for the foreseeable future,” according to the draft prospectus.
The Journal said roughly a third of the draft prospectus is dedicated to risk factors. Anthropic warned that “harm that could result from a catastrophic AI-related incident” might be so large that it would be unable to obtain insurance to cover the potential damages, the Journal reported.
Anthropic also cited growing political resistance to data centers, warning that it has “become more organized and coordinated across jurisdictions,” according to the Journal. It said some operators of facilities run on its behalf have “limited operating history,” and their facilities may be less reliable than those of large cloud providers.
Pay and Pledges
Dario and Daniela Amodei each earned a base salary of about $655,000 in 2025, the Journal reported. Dario’s stock and option awards brought his total compensation to about $18 million, and Daniela’s to about $16.5 million, according to the Journal. Each of Anthropic’s co-founders pledged to dedicate 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to philanthropy, according to the prospectus as the Journal reported it.
Update, 21 October: What Reuters and Bloomberg Add
Reuters, relaying the Journal’s report on 20 October 2026, said Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment and that “Reuters could not immediately verify the report.” Reuters also noted that it had reported first in September that Anthropic posted a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, as part of a series of exclusives from its IPO prospectus, as carried by The Straits Times.
Bloomberg News reported on 14 August that Anthropic generated preliminary revenue of more than $11.5 billion in the second quarter, up from $4.73 billion in the first quarter, and that the figures remained preliminary and could change, according to IBTimes’ summary. Together that is more than $16.2 billion by our arithmetic, in line with the Journal’s report that Anthropic generated “around $16.3 billion” in the first half, citing the draft prospectus.
In an updated report on 20 October, Reuters said it had reviewed the draft prospectus itself, and that the $72 billion charge reflected “an increase in the estimated value of bonds that could eventually convert into Anthropic shares, rather than cash costs tied to its operations.” Reuters also wrote that “revenue had more than doubled from the first quarter to $11.6 billion in the second quarter,” and that “some investors are now weighing a lower valuation of around $1.5 trillion” (Reuters, as carried by AOL).
Update, 21 October: Anthropic Could File Its S-1 Publicly as Soon as Friday
Anthropic is set to publicly file its S-1 investor prospectus “as soon as Friday,” according to three people familiar with the artificial intelligence firm’s plans, Yahoo Finance reported on 21 October (David Hollerith and Daniel Howley). Anthropic did not respond to Yahoo Finance’s request for comment on the timing of its S-1.
Yahoo Finance noted that under SEC rules, companies using the confidential process must make their registration materials available 15 calendar days before the start of their formal investor roadshow. Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft registration statement in June. A public filing “would clear a key procedural hurdle toward a potential November listing, though the timing of the offering remains subject to market conditions and other factors,” Yahoo Finance wrote.
Connecting the Coverage
This builds on our reporting from this month. On 4 October we covered a wire account of Reuters’ reporting on the confidential prospectus, which put at least $518 billion in computing commitments over a decade, with about 80% non-cancellable or payable regardless of usage. On 15 October we covered investors weighing a $1.5 trillion IPO value, after Anthropic told prospective IPO investors that third-quarter revenue jumped 45% to $16.8 billion from the previous quarter, Reuters reported.
As we read it, the gap between revenue and compute spending is the number IPO investors can test: around $16.3 billion against nearly $9 billion in the first half, as the Journal reported, against $4.6 billion and $7.3 billion for all of 2025.
As we read it, the commitments are where the risk sits: around $450 billion in cloud agreements the Journal says are mostly noncancelable, more than $600 billion including the Broadcom chip lease, and up to $150 billion more under negotiation.
As we read it, the risk factors the Journal reported point the same way: one-fifth of revenue from two customers, cloud partners that increasingly see Anthropic as a competitor, and organized resistance to data centers.
Anthropic’s draft prospectus, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, 20 October 2026
“limited number of customers for the foreseeable future”
Three Implications
$72B OF THE LOSS The Journal reported that $72 billion of the $80.7 billion first-half net loss resulted from accounting charges tied to convertible notes and other instruments.
$16.3B REVENUE Anthropic generated around $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier, according to the Journal.
OVER $600B OF COMMITMENTS Including the Broadcom chip lease, Anthropic’s future infrastructure costs top $600 billion, the Journal reported.
The framework frames the economics this way: “Training was a cost center: episodic, concentrated among roughly twenty frontier model labs, amortizable across trillions of tokens. Inference is a revenue engine: continuous, distributed across millions of applications and agents, incurring marginal cost with every query.”
As we read it, the draft prospectus figures the Journal reported are a test of that frame for one company: compute spending that rose with revenue in the first half, and long-dated commitments that run years beyond it. The framework was published in March 2026 and does not discuss Anthropic’s prospectus.
What Is Not Established
We have read the Journal’s article, not the draft prospectus, which is not public on the SEC’s EDGAR system as far as we could check. A draft can change before a final filing. The roughly $450 billion in cloud agreements and the more than $600 billion total the Journal reported may not be counted the same way as the $518 billion in Reuters’ earlier account; we have not seen how either total is built. The Journal did not name the two customers.
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The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic’s draft prospectus shows about $16.3 billion in first-half revenue, nearly $9 billion of compute spending and an $80.7 billion net loss, $72 billion of which came from accounting charges tied to its financing instruments. As we read it, the operating figures and the compute commitments the Journal listed are what IPO investors are being asked to weigh, more than the headline loss.
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A note on sourcing. This piece is built on The Wall Street Journal’s 20 October 2026 report on Anthropic’s draft IPO prospectus, read in full; we have not seen the draft itself. Earlier figures come from our own pieces citing Reuters, Bloomberg and Anthropic. The chart shows figures the Journal reported for the six months ended 30 June 2026. Nothing here is financial or investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
