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| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Anthropic has 80%+ margins on inference. If you read the interviews where Dario said this closely, you'll find that he's talking in hypothethicals. We will have to wait for the S-1 to get audited figures, until then, only insiders have any idea (and only the accountants can be sure). | | |
| ▲ | tristanj 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That point is irrelevant because the number comes from SemiAnalysis, not Dario's interview: > SemiAnalysis estimates that Anthropic's overall gross margin has rebounded from negative 94% in 2024 to the mid-60% range, with the gross margin of its API business exceeding 80%. https://www.tradingkey.com/analysis/stocks/us-stocks/2620181... Given Anthropic is charging $50 per million output tokens on Fable, those high margins are very believable. | | |
| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Look, that's an estimate (by a presumably biased observer). I don't really have a horse in this race, new large tech companies are fine by me, even if only to reduce the power of the current ones. However, I find these numbers incredibly hard to believe, and most likely deceptive, given that they recently (like March) started making enterprises pay API rates, so even if they were profitable (and if they paid from Fable training from this post cost money) I would be sceptical that this will continue, given all the competition in this space. tl;dr let's all wait for the S1 (it will presumably be soon, unless SpaceX declines get them to postpone). |
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| ▲ | etempleton 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why do they both need to keep borrowing so much money if the margins are so fat? | | |
| ▲ | tristanj 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Demand for compute is growing 10x year-over-year, faster than inference profits can fund expansion. At 80% margin the payback period is 1.25 years. Cash flow can't keep pace with that scale. |
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| ▲ | stackskipton 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Anthropic has 80%+ margins on inference. That's like saying my delivery company is profitable because with current gas prices, my margin is 80%. Yea, what about all money you spent to get there? You still profitable then? | | |
| ▲ | tristanj 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes, actually. Anthropic has gross margins of 40%+, hit $75B ARR last month, and (as of this quarter) is profitable. | | |
| ▲ | stackskipton 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | As Ed Zitron pointed out, that "quarter" of profitability is EBITDA profitability and comes with plenty of creative accounting. When they do it for a year, we can say "They have found profitability" | | |
| ▲ | WarmWash 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This[1][2] Ed Zitron, or another one? Because I don't know how you can be so totally and completely wrong for so many years, and still have people lend you credibility. But I definitely do understand how you can rage farm subscription dollars from suckers for years. [1]https://www.wheresyoured.at/bubble-trouble/ [2]https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/ | | |
| ▲ | tacktal 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yea what do guys like Damodaran know about finance and valuation. This board is only good to understand the consensus dipshit opinion. |
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| ▲ | tristanj 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why are you citing old news? Zitron wrote that months ago when Anthropic was reported to have ~30B ARR. Anthropic now has more than double that, at even higher margins. There's no doubt at this point that Anthropic is profitable. | | |
| ▲ | stackskipton 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Because again, we haven't seen further reports. As always, we are debating financials on a company that doesn't have to disclose them regularly. | | |
| ▲ | tristanj 2 days ago | parent [-] | | We most certainly have: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i... The companies are growing so rapidly that citing their financials from several months ago is practically worthless. | | |
| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > We most certainly have: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/anthropics-gross-margin-i... This is all un-audited speculation. Even audited financials often have massive weirdness, but unaudited revenue/margin numbers are basically garbage. > The companies are growing so rapidly that citing their financials from several months ago is practically worthless. I wish I lived in a world where this was true. Unless their inference margins are fat enough to pay for training and employees (including SBC) then their historical financials are really important. Again, I could be wrong here but without the S-1 nobody really knows (unless they work for Anthropic, in which case they should really not be commenting in this thread). |
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| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If they were profitable, they'd release real numbers and announce concrete plans for an IPO. They are very obviously not profitable; they just announced a $65B Series H two months ago. They're almost literally setting money on fire. | | |
| ▲ | tristanj 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Utterly false -- review the numbers yourself https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-... https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-3q26-profit-... The company was profitable in Q2 and is projected to exceed $1B in profit in Q3. | | |
| ▲ | stackskipton 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I can't read the first article 100% but it's linked here: https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle... which I noted in my original post seems to be full of juiced numbers. Second link talks about revenue and operating costs. Again, it's very possible that Anthropic is profitable as I hinted looking at pure revenue vs operating costs. That's like saying your delivery service is profitable because you are only looking at the cost of drivers + gas and ignoring maintenance, car purchases and building of garages to get you to that point. Again, the poster you replied to is right. If they are extremely profitable, the logical thing is file S-1 publicly and IPO. The fact they haven't done so is interesting. | | |
| ▲ | tristanj 2 days ago | parent [-] | | 1) Ed Zitron has one of the worst track records in the AI space. He's consistently wrong about everything. Every major prediction he has made over the past five years has aged terribly. 2) After calling the doom of OpenAI and Anthropic for half a decade, Zitron pivoted this year into accusing these companies of financial engineering and fraud. I have read the "article" you linked and he makes this accusation with no evidence backing it up. 3) I intentionally did not address your "delivery service" example because it is financially illiterate. Per the first section of the links provided (which you can read without paywall), Anthropic is EBITDA profitable. EBITDA profitability implies the company has positive gross margins AND is operational profitable, which means the company is profitable under your fictitious "delivery service" scenario. 4) Claiming a profitable company must immediately file an S-1 and IPO is a non-sequitur. Thousands of large, highly profitable companies choose to stay private for strategic reasons. 5) Did you casually forget the fact that Anthropic is currently in the process of going public? They already filed a draft S-1 with the SEC. They're planning an IPO this October. Having gone through an IPO myself, it takes over a year of preparation for an IPO. The slow timeline is completely normal for a company of their size. | | |
| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Anthropic has not released an official EBITDA figure. | | |
| ▲ | saberience 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It’s a not very well kept secret in the industry that Anthropic has been profitable for some time now and there are margins are only getting better. We knew they were maybe at 30-40% margin a few months ago but now it’s looking like they are operating at more like 70-80% margin. The new Nvidia chips and the improved inference stack is only making this situation better for them. | | |
| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > It’s a not very well kept secret in the industry I would rather say it's been a very well kept secret if it's true, which I highly doubt. It also makes absolutely no sense; so far, Anthropic has taken every opportunity they had to release good numbers. Why would they keep it secret if they were wildly profitable? None of this makes any sense. The only thing that makes sense is that Anthropic isn't profitable at all, and is burning investor money to stay afloat. Else, why keep raising tens of billions and only release vague annualized numbers? Genuinely, this makes no sense at all. If you want to convince people otherwise, you need more than just "oh, it's a secret, but we all know it." |
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| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not a single thing in my comment is false. |
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| ▲ | etempleton 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Until they are public and they release full financials using standard accounting practices, I would take what they say with a grain of salt. SpaceX also painted a pretty rosey picture of their financials, but when they filed for IPO it became clear they were doing some real cherry picking and in actuality they were losing a ton of money. If they really were doing so well they would file publicly and be rushing to IPO. I guarantee they are losing billions per quarter. You can say they make money on inference, but that is irrelevant. That doesn't include all of their overhead and indirect costs let alone model training. | |
| ▲ | etempleton 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You have to assume that they aren’t being too creative with their accounting, which Anthropic and Open AI most certainly are. |
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