Anthropic AI
Anthropic recorded positive adjusted operating income during the second quarter. Unsplash

Anthropic's revenue reportedly soared more than 14-fold in the second quarter, giving the Claude maker fresh momentum as it prepares for what could become one of the biggest technology IPOs ever.

The artificial intelligence company generated preliminary revenue of more than $11.5 billion during the latest completed quarter, compared with $787 million a year earlier. Revenue also more than doubled from $4.73 billion in the first quarter of 2026.

The extraordinary growth provides another indication of how quickly Anthropic is turning demand for generative AI, particularly among businesses and developers, into revenue as its rivalry with OpenAI intensifies.

Bloomberg News detailed that that Anthropic also recorded positive adjusted operating income during the second quarter. The figures remain preliminary and could change.

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The numbers arrive at a critical moment for the company as executives meet prospective investors ahead of a possible stock-market debut.

Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao has been leading early meetings with potential investors, although those discussions have so far remained high-level and have not included specific financial figures or a proposed valuation, CNBC previously reported.

An IPO could come as soon as this fall, potentially making Anthropic one of the first major private generative AI companies to test public investors' appetite for the sector.

Its growth numbers help explain why expectations are so high.

Anthropic said in May that its annualized revenue run rate had crossed $47 billion, up from roughly $10 billion in actual revenue during 2025. Run-rate revenue is different from booked annual revenue because it annualizes sales at their current pace, but the increase nevertheless illustrates how rapidly the company's business has expanded.

Much of that growth has been driven by enterprise customers and Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding product. Businesses have increasingly adopted Claude for software development and other professional tasks, helping Anthropic establish a particularly strong position in the corporate AI market.

That enterprise strength has also made Anthropic an increasingly formidable competitor to OpenAI.

The competition is becoming particularly important as both companies try to prove that the enormous amounts being spent on AI infrastructure can eventually translate into sustainable profits. Training and operating increasingly sophisticated models requires vast amounts of computing power, advanced chips and data-center capacity, making revenue growth only one side of the financial equation.

Anthropic's reported positive adjusted operating income in the second quarter could therefore be nearly as important to investors as its surging sales. It provides an early indication that the company may be able to improve profitability even while continuing to spend heavily on expansion.

Still, the scale of the expectations surrounding Anthropic is becoming extraordinary.

The company is forecasting revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028 as it makes its case to potential IPO investors, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the projections. Anthropic is also expected to reach around $100 billion to $120 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026.

Those projections could play a major role in determining how public-market investors value the company.

Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in a private funding round in May, and bankers and investors are now examining future revenue multiples as they consider what the company could be worth in an IPO, according to Reuters. The company is still spending enormous sums on computing infrastructure, model development and talent, meaning investors will have to decide how much they are willing to pay today for profits expected years into the future.

That question has implications beyond Anthropic. An IPO would provide one of the clearest tests yet of whether the extraordinary private-market valuations attached to generative AI companies can survive scrutiny from public investors. A strong debut could reinforce confidence across the AI industry, while skepticism over Anthropic's valuation or spending could raise broader questions about how the market is pricing the AI boom.