News from the IT community on October 16th: Early this morning (the 16th) Beijing time, Reuters cited four informed sources stating that as the financing costs of AI continue to rise, causing market concern, some existing investors and those preparing to participate in IPO have begun to reconsider their valuations of Anthropic following the release of Anthropic's latest financial data.
Three informed sources stated that some investors attended the investor day event held by Anthropic in San Francisco, where a valuation of approximately $1.5 trillion ($BJW_KEEP_00002__ note: current exchange rate is about 10.05 trillion yuan) was discussed. Previously, investors expected the valuation of Anthropic to be around $2 trillion ($BJW_KEEP_00002__ note: current exchange rate is about 13.41 trillion yuan) when it went public in November.
Anthropic disclosed to potential investors that revenue in the third quarter reached $16.8 billion (approximately 112.61 billion yuan at current exchange rates), a 45% increase from the previous quarter, and a profit was achieved after adjusting certain financial items.
Performance data alleviated some investors' concerns about the high R&D costs of AI, but the slowdown in revenue growth still disappointed some investors. Anthropic's revenue in the second quarter reached $11.6 billion (approximately 77.755 billion yuan at current exchange rates), more than doubling from the first quarter, while the quarter-on-quarter growth rate in the third quarter dropped to 45%.
The market response after the listing of Anthropic may also affect the prospects of the entire AI industry. Investors believe that in the short term, the performance of the AI market will largely depend on whether Anthropic can be successfully listed, as well as whether OpenAI can be listed next year.
Investors' concerns regarding the valuation of Anthropic coincided with a wave of selling in technology stocks across global financial markets. AI infrastructure companies, chip manufacturers, and emerging cloud service providers that rent out computing power to AI companies were all affected. CoreWeave, which received investment from NVIDIA, saw a sharp drop in its stock price and bond prices on Thursday, reflecting the market's growing concern about the reliance of AI infrastructure construction on debt financing.
If the performance of Anthropic on the market is poor, investors' concerns regarding the boom in infrastructure investment in AI may further deepen.
Previous reports stated that Anthropic's revenue in 2025 increased to about 12 times that of the previous year, approaching 4.6 billion US dollars (about 30.834 billion yuan at current exchange rates). However, after excluding the impact of debt write-downs mainly caused by previous financings, the operating loss still exceeded 8 billion US dollars (about 53.624 billion yuan at current exchange rates).
The prospectus for Anthropic states that the impact of AI on the global economy will surpass the transformations brought about by industrialization, electricity, and the internet. Anthropic also disclosed that it incurred a loss of $42 billion in 2025 (approximately 281.525 billion yuan at current exchange rates), and it is expected that more funds will be required for the construction of AI infrastructure in the future.
