I do find it pretty extraordinary that Anthropic's revenue growing from $4.8bn in Q1 to $11.5bn in Q2 to $16.8bn in Q3 is seen as a disappointment, but they did indeed stop doubling on a per-quarter basis.

I think it's a combination of it not being a GAAP revenue number and the timing. If you have flexibility in the report of the revenue number people assume you will choose the most flattering one especially before an IPO. If this is the most flattering number they can demonstrate, people are going to worry about what the not so flattering data says.

The other part is how big the debt load is downstream. Anthropic is one of the revenue engines that has to feed the rest of the supply chain, clouds, SPVs, semiconductors, etc. They have to be pulling very large numbers to justify everyone else's finances.

I think the growth is real and tremendous and that's probably more important than this blip in revenue growth. But things tend to look peachy until they're not and so everyone is on watch for cracks in the foundation.

I don't have the numbers handy, but they spent drastically more than that each quarter. Growing revenue is all well and good, but profit does eventually matter, especially if debt dries up.