Anthropic's Ambitious Revenue Projections: Aiming for $26 Billion by 2026

Anthropic targets gigantic $26 billion in revenue by the end of 2026 -- eye-watering sum is more than double OpenAI's projected 2025 earnings

Claude AI developer, Anthropic, has released its revenue targets for the next couple of years, and they are nothing if not ambitious. Following an estimation of just $4 billion in 2025 in July, it's now claiming it will hit $9 billion annualized revenue by the end of the year, and as much as $26 billion next year, according to Reuters. That's not just more than double its own projections for the best-case scenario this year, it's more than double the projected 2025 revenue of OpenAI. To say some analysts have their doubts, or at least questions about where Anthropic's revenue is going to come from, would be an understatement. Annualized return revenue is based on a single month of revenue extrapolated out to 12 months, making it a dubious way of predicting yearly revenue, at best. With all the hundreds of billions of dollars of circular investment the AI industry enjoys, it might seem hard to imagine that these companies don't actually generate a lot of money yet. They do, in sheer dollar terms, but not compared to their valuations, investments, and the industry hype. OpenAI is loosely valued at around $500 billion, and yet may make just $13 billion in revenue in 2025 - and even that is based on somewhat optimistic projections. Anthropic is valued at $183 billion after a recent funding round, but is projecting less than $10 billion in revenue this year. They're also spending far more than they earn. OpenAI lost $5 billion last year and will continue its losses for many years to come. Paying out billions in lawsuits won't help Anthropic's margins, either. Nobody is making money with AI - except for Nvidia, which is perhaps why it's so keen to keep pumping the industry - but they are at least earning some with it, and Anthropic believes it can earn a lot more, even if it's not profitable. No one has figured out a way to make AI profitable yet, aside from the companies selling the chips for training and inference. But various AI companies are trying different strategies. OpenAI, the most well-known AI company with its ChatGPT chatbot, earns money from enterprise customers but has primarily pitched itself as an AI developer for the masses. Its 800 million active users suggest that it has captured an enormous segment of the potential market for AI tools, but only five per cent of them pay anything for it, according to The Register. Anthropic takes a slightly different approach, earning as much as 80% of its revenue from its enterprise customers. That includes coding app company Cursor, as well as software-as-a-service company SAP, and AI legal assistance firm, Filevine. Anthropic also markets itself differently, projecting an image of safety, security, and professionalism - something that OpenAI, with its Sora 2 deepfakes, doesn't really match. That may be why Anthropic can charge so much more for the API calls on its various models. Its Claude Opus 4 model costs $15 per million input tokens, and as much as $75 per million output tokens. In comparison, the latest GPT-5 model from OpenAI is priced at just $1.25 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. Even its recent "lite" model, Claude Haiku 4.5, is $1 per million input tokens and $1.25 million output tokens. GPT-5 mini costs just $0.25 per million input tokens, and Google's Gemini Flash 2.5 is $0.3 per million. But businesses are willing to pay for AI at higher prices, because they're being promised that deploying AI throughout the workforce will increase efficiency and productivity. In reality, only a few seem to actually manage that. That's the gravy train that Anthropic hopes keeps rolling, and in fact projects that it won't just continue, but will accelerate in 2026. Despite the growing fears of a bubble forming around the industry and the shaky investment ground it's built on, especially since enterprise adoption of AI is starting to slow. Another potential revenue stream for all these companies is to just go after more users. If you can't bring the companies to you, why not see if you can get more people to use the cheaper models? OpenAI announced in August that it was launching a new ChatGPT plan, its cheapest one yet at just under $5 a month, in India, the world's largest market for just about anything, due to having the largest population. Anthropic's development of the cheaper Haiku models is likely a similar endeavour, despite its reputation being mostly pinned to its more capable models. Instead of going after individual users like OpenAI is doing, though, Anthropic could lean into its enterprise focus and target smaller customers with less cash to burn on AI. Call centres, small businesses that want a support chatbot, these kinds of fast-response, low-information roles could be a good use for faster, leaner, and importantly, more affordable chatbots. But there's no guarantee of that, despite Anthropic's optimistic projections, and it's not going to be able to tap Chinese markets any time soon. Anthropic may also just be able to spend its way to increase revenue streams. Its latest funding round brought in over $13 billion of Series F funding in September, re-valuing the company at over $180 billion. That's an enormous amount of capital that can be invested in all the usual sources for AI companies: Compute, model training, and circular investments into infrastructure. OpenAI is driving towards an IPO while its $500 billion valuation holds. It's also moving into social media spaces. Sora 2 feeds of "slop-tok" could act as a vehicle for advertising, which has some potential. That said, the longevity of Sora 2's novelty seems shaky at best, and other AI companies like Perplexity are struggling to make the advertising model work for them. The AI browser didn't get off to a great start, either. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also suggested that the company may diversify its models into generating explicit adult content. Anthropic isn't going down that route, though. It doesn't have the kind of user feeds where it could sell adverts. It will instead need to broaden its customer base dramatically. Government contracts are another potential source of new customers, but that poses its own risks, especially when it comes to international partners and the volatile nature of the current U.S. administration. Ultimately, though, Anthropic has the investment funds for expansion. Like everyone else in this industry, it just needs to hope that the bubble holds through 2026 for it to even attempt to meet those eye-watering revenue projections.

Exclusive: Anthropic aims to nearly triple annualized revenue in 2026, sources say

Oct 15 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year, fueled by the rapid adoption of its enterprise products, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate - a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace - by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Anthropic told Reuters its annual revenue run rate is approaching $7 billion this month, but declined to comment on future projections. The company has said its annual revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August. Anthropic debuted a new version of its cheapest AI model, Haiku, on Wednesday, as part of a broader effort to appeal to companies that are looking for capable AI systems that are dramatically cheaper than its more advanced models. The Haiku 4.5 model sells for about one-third the price of Sonnet 4, one of its medium-sized models. AI DEMAND SOARS The revenue projections underscore continued strong demand for generative AI tools among businesses and help explain investor enthusiasm, even as AI spending, especially in infrastructure buildout, comes under scrutiny. Some people worry the level of investment might be unsustainable. Fueling the expansion is the uptake of enterprise products, which are built for organizations. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers, which account for about 80% of its revenue. The company sells access to its models via application programming interfaces, which are tools that help different software communicate. It offers products including the code‑generation tool Claude Code, which has reached an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $1 billion since its launch earlier this year, one of the people added. The revenue trajectory positions Anthropic as a rival to ChatGPT maker OpenAI. OpenAI said it crossed $13 billion in annualized revenue in August, and is on pace to achieve over $20 billion by end of the year, driven by the continued growth of ChatGPT, the generative AI assistant that has more than 800 million weekly active users. Anthropic's revenue milestones follow a period of brisk fundraising and valuation gains for the San Francisco-based startup. The company was recently valued at $183 billion after raising $13 billion in a Series F round led by ICONIQ, more than doubling its $61.5 billion valuation in March. Backed by technology companies including Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google and Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab, Anthropic develops the Claude family of large language models, which compete with OpenAI's GPT series. The company emphasizes AI safety and building models for enterprise use cases. Its models have helped power a boom in code‑generation startups such as Cursor. Anthropic has been expanding sales to governments and growing outside the U.S. In August, it said it would offer its Claude model to the U.S. government for $1. The company plans to open its first office in Bengaluru, India, in 2026 -- its second-largest market after the U.S. -- and intends to triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold this year to meet rising demand. Reporting by Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li and Rod Nickel Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Krystal Hu Thomson Reuters Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.

Anthropic aims to nearly triple annualized revenue in 2026, sources say

The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate - a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace - by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year, fueled by the rapid adoption of its enterprise products, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate - a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace - by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Anthropic told Reuters its annual revenue run rate is approaching $7 billion this month, but declined to comment on future projections. The company has said its annual revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August. Anthropic debuted a new version of its cheapest AI model, Haiku, on Wednesday, as part of a broader effort to appeal to companies that are looking for capable AI systems that are dramatically cheaper than its more advanced models. The Haiku 4.5 model sells for about one-third the price of Sonnet 4, one of its medium-sized models. AI demand soars The revenue projections underscore continued strong demand for generative AI tools among businesses and help explain investor enthusiasm, even as AI spending, especially in infrastructure buildout, comes under scrutiny. Some people worry the level of investment might be unsustainable. Fueling the expansion is the uptake of enterprise products, which are built for organizations. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers, which account for about 80% of its revenue. The company sells access to its models via application programming interfaces, which are tools that help different software communicate. It offers products including the code-generation tool Claude Code, which has reached an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $1 billion since its launch earlier this year, one of the people added. The revenue trajectory positions Anthropic as a rival to ChatGPT maker OpenAI. OpenAI said it crossed $13 billion in annualized revenue in August, and is on pace to achieve over $20 billion by end of the year, driven by the continued growth of ChatGPT, the generative AI assistant that has more than 800 million weekly active users. Anthropic's revenue milestones follow a period of brisk fundraising and valuation gains for the San Francisco-based startup. The company was recently valued at $183 billion after raising $13 billion in a Series F round led by ICONIQ, more than doubling its $61.5 billion valuation in March. Backed by technology companies including Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, Anthropic develops the Claude family of large language models, which compete with OpenAI's GPT series. The company emphasizes AI safety and building models for enterprise use cases. Its models have helped power a boom in code-generation startups such as Cursor. Anthropic has been expanding sales to governments and growing outside the U.S. In August, it said it would offer its Claude model to the U.S. government for $1. The company plans to open its first office in Bengaluru, India, in 2026 -- its second-largest market after the U.S. -- and intends to triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold this year to meet rising demand.

Jeff Bezos-Backed Anthropic Projects To Nearly Triple Revenues By 2026: Report - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup, backed by Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), is reportedly projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year. Enterprise Demand Drives The Boom The company is projected to reach its internal goal of a $9 billion annual revenue run rate by the end of 2025 and is aiming for over $20 billion in annualized revenue in its base scenario and up to $26 billion in its best-case scenario for the next year, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday. The growth is fueled by strong demand from enterprise clients, the report said. The company also revealed that its annual revenue run rate is nearing $7 billion this month, up from over $5 billion reported in August, it added. Anthropic did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment. On Wednesday, Anthropic also launched an updated version of its most affordable AI model, Haiku, aiming to attract businesses seeking powerful AI at a fraction of the cost of its more advanced offerings. See Also: Trump Says He Wasn't Happy India Was Buying Russian Oil And Now Modi Has Agreed To Stop Doing It: 'Big Step' Rapid Growth Amid Fundraising And Rising Valuations The company's explosive growth comes on the back of its valuation, which surged last month to $183 billion after a $13 billion funding round. Anthropic's rapid growth has also sparked a debate about the durability of its enterprise-driven path compared to the consumer hype surrounding other AI models. Despite not dominating the consumer market like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic has quietly secured a significant share of the enterprise market. Meanwhile, OpenAI has reportedly revealed its five-year plan to pursue new revenue streams, secure debt partnerships, and raise funds to support its $1 trillion spending commitment. READ NEXT: Musk, Anthropic Battle To Build Next Microsoft, Salesforce Image via Shutterstock Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. AMZNAmazon.com Inc$216.200.29%OverviewGOOGAlphabet Inc$253.050.53%GOOGLAlphabet Inc$252.170.45%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Anthropic aims to nearly triple annualized revenue in 2026

Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year, fueled by the rapid adoption of its enterprise products, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate -- a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace -- by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Anthropic said its annual revenue run rate is approaching $7 billion this month, but declined to comment on future projections. The company has said its annual revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August. Anthropic debuted a new version of its cheapest AI model, Haiku, on Wednesday, as part of a broader effort to appeal to companies that are looking for capable AI systems that are dramatically cheaper than its more advanced models. The Haiku 4.5 model sells for about one-third the price of Sonnet 4, one of its medium-sized models.

Anthropic aims to nearly triple annualized revenue in 2026, sources say

(Reuters) -Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year, fueled by the rapid adoption of its enterprise products, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate - a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace - by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Anthropic told Reuters its annual revenue run rate is approaching $7 billion this month, but declined to comment on future projections. The company has said its annual revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August. AI DEMAND SOARS The projections underscore continued strong demand for generative AI tools among businesses and help explain investor enthusiasm, even as AI spending, especially in infrastructure buildout, comes under scrutiny. Some people worry the level of investment might be unsustainable. Fueling the expansion is the uptake of enterprise products, which are built for organizations. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers, which account for about 80% of its revenue. The company sells access to its models via application programming interfaces, which are tools that help different software communicate. It offers products including the code-generation tool Claude Code, which has reached an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $1 billion since its launch earlier this year, one of the people added. The revenue trajectory positions Anthropic as a rival to ChatGPT maker OpenAI. OpenAI said in June that its annualized revenue run rate had reached $10 billion, up from roughly $5.5 billion in December 2024, driven by the continued growth of ChatGPT, the generative AI assistant that has more than 800 million weekly active users. Anthropic's revenue milestones follow a period of brisk fundraising and valuation gains for the San Francisco-based startup. The company was recently valued at $183 billion after raising $13 billion in a Series F round led by ICONIQ, more than doubling its $61.5 billion valuation in March. Backed by technology companies including Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, Anthropic develops the Claude family of large language models, which compete with OpenAI's GPT series. The company emphasizes AI safety and building models for enterprise use cases. Its models have helped power a boom in code-generation startups such as Cursor. Anthropic has been expanding sales to governments and growing outside the U.S. In August, it said it would offer its Claude model to the U.S. government for $1. The company plans to open its first office in Bengaluru, India, in 2026 -- its second-largest market after the U.S.-- and intends to triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold this year to meet rising demand. (Reporting by Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li and Rod Nickel) By Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman