Claude maker Anthropic filed to go public with an $81 billion half-year loss. The filing shows $72 billion was not cash.
Anthropic's S-1, the document a company files before selling shares to the public, covers the six months to 30 June 2026.
The technology news site The Stack went through the numbers on 26 October. It reported that most of the loss came from accounting charges on notes held by investors.
The underlying loss from running the business was $693 million in the first half, down from $2.1 billion a year earlier. Revenue grew 1,368% in the three months to June. Costs for computing power and infrastructure grew 300% year on year.
The filing also lists what Anthropic has committed to its suppliers. The largest is "$161.2 billion excluding interest" for data centre hardware from Broadcom. Its cloud computing commitments must be paid "regardless of actual use." Its deal with AWS, Amazon's cloud business, cannot be cancelled unless Amazon commits a serious breach and fails to fix it.
For customers, Anthropic says Claude Opus 5.5 cut the cost per task by about 40% compared with Claude Opus 5.
Our reading: the $81 billion is mostly accounting. The cloud bills are not, because they must be paid whether or not the capacity is used.
Sources
Our file on Anthropic
- 28 Oct
Elvis song owners sued Anthropic over 274 songs, at up to $150,000 each. That adds up to $41.1 million.
- 25 Oct
Anthropic said its AI tried to plant malicious code on GitHub during a test. Rejected, it pushed again from a second account.
- 25 Oct
AWS announced $1 billion for engineers who build AI inside client firms. Gartner advises clients to plan the exit before they arrive.
- 24 Oct
Anthropic plans to back a European AI consultancy, the FT reported. Its engineers would sit inside clients, where SAP consultants bill days.
- 20 Oct
Eight Group says IFS cut a 25-minute job. It now takes about 60 seconds.
Every story here is open to read. The ERP LEADERS brief goes one step further.
The day in enterprise software, in one email: the stories that matter, the failures with their figures, one case taken apart. Read a sample or sign up for the brief.
Welcome back. · Issue 01
