Anthropic's annualized revenue hits $65 billion, up $18 billion in two months

$18 billion added in two months

Anthropic's annualized revenue estimate surpassed $65 billion as of late July. Annualized revenue is a metric that projects recent short-term performance out to a full year, and this figure jumped $18 billion in just two months from $47 billion in May. Going back further, it stood at $9 billion at the end of 2025. According to Bloomberg's report, this pace suggests growth is accelerating rather than slowing.

Anthropic is the company behind Claude. Amazon and Google are providing major investment and server infrastructure, but Anthropic is the sole entity building the models. The company closed a $65 billion funding round at a $96.5 billion valuation this past May, and this revenue disclosure—coming just two and a half months later—has re-drawn investor attention.

OpenAI also doubled, but

Rival OpenAI has also seen significant revenue growth. According to Bloomberg's report last week, OpenAI's annualized revenue reached $40 billion, doubling from $20 billion at the end of 2025. While the two companies may calculate revenue differently, investors are nonetheless paying closer attention to Anthropic.

Point in time	Anthropic annualized revenue	OpenAI annualized revenue
End of 2025	$9 billion bar:8	$20 billion bar:18
May 2026	$47 billion bar:42	-
July–August 2026	$65 billion bar:59	$40 billion bar:36

Why they're aiming for a $2 trillion valuation

Both companies are reported to have already filed confidential IPO paperwork. Anthropic, however, appears likely to go public before OpenAI. According to the Financial Times, Anthropic could list as early as this fall, targeting a valuation of more than $2 trillion. If realized, this would be the largest market debut in history.

At an investor meeting held on August 11, Anthropic was already discussing a target IPO window of September or early October. Investors reportedly pressed hard on questions about low-cost Chinese models like Moonshot and DeepSeek, the company's relationship with the Trump administration, and public opposition to data centers. This revenue surge announcement appears to be Anthropic's way of putting forward numbers strong enough to offset those concerns.

Revenue rose even as prices fell

What's notable is that this revenue surge coincides with a period of price cuts. As confirmed on August 14, Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5 at half the price of its previous flagship model and withdrew planned price increases for Sonnet 5. OpenAI also cut input and output token prices for GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% each. These were defensive price cuts aimed at retaining enterprise customers tempted by Chinese models, yet revenue rose at both companies regardless—suggesting usage grew by more than enough to offset the lower prices.

Editor's view

Looking purely at the numbers, this isn't really a story about growth rate—it's about direction. OpenAI doubled its revenue. Anthropic added, in just two months, an amount equal to 40% of its entire May revenue. In absolute growth terms, OpenAI is still larger, but what investors are reacting to is the question of how long this trend can continue. Connecting the three data points—$47 billion in May, $65 billion in July, and a year-end target of $100-120 billion—reads as a signal that the curve isn't bending, which is why the market is reacting so strongly.

In the past, a revenue disclosure like this would have ended up as a one-line press release touting "X amount in annual recurring revenue achieved." But now, with an IPO on the horizon, numbers like these immediately become bargaining chips in valuation negotiations. The basis for Anthropic's $2 trillion ask ultimately comes down to this curve. Compared to the $96.5 billion valuation in May, this represents more than a 20x re-rating in just three months—and that's only possible because revenue has actually grown enough to support the logic.

For domestic companies, the takeaway is straightforward. Organizations using Claude or GPT-series APIs are seeing a continued downward trend in prices, which creates room to scale up usage accordingly. However, it's unclear how long these price cuts will last. They could be a temporary sacrifice to shape the revenue curve ahead of an IPO, or they could reflect genuine improvements in the underlying cost structure. That distinction will only become clear once actual financial statements are disclosed after listing.

Over the coming weeks, the key questions will be whether Anthropic's actual IPO filing becomes public and what the specific listing timeline looks like. OpenAI will inevitably be summoned as a comparison point around the same time, so revenue disclosures from both companies are likely to keep serving as competitive leverage against one another for the time being.