Anthropic tells investors it expects second straight profitable quarter ahead of potential blockbuster IPO: FT

Anthropic has reportedly told its investors that it will be profitable for the second quarter in a row as the firm gears up for a potential blockbuster initial public offering.

The Claude developer has told a small group of shareholders that its adjusted operating income will be positive for Q3, the Financial Times reported, citing multiple people with knowledge of the matter. Adjusted operating income strips out costs such as stock-based compensation.

Anthropic recorded an adjusted operating profit in Q2 after revenues surged 14-fold from a year earlier to $11.6 billion, according to The Latent's data dashboard.

The firm hit annualized revenue of $65 billion at the end of July, up from $9 billion at the end of last year.

The frontier lab's gross margins are more than 80% before accounting for revenue shared with distribution partners and the cost of training its models, according to two of the people, the FT said. Sustained profitability is a significant milestone for the five-year-old company ahead of a reported Nasdaq listing, potentially before the U.S. midterms.

Anthropic was expected to unveil its prospectus last week, instead opting to share documents with this select group of investors instead, before sharing them with the public, according to people familiar with the process.

Pacing frontier AI development

Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed slowing the pace of frontier AI development, citing safety and alignment concerns. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, and SpaceXAI's Elon Musk also signaled support for the direction.

Former White House AI czar David Sacks said frontier labs should slow development if they believe it is dangerous, but argued they should do so voluntarily rather than use safety concerns to justify regulation that may cement their market dominance.