Anthropic's Q3 Results Are In — The Costs Are Exploding

Anthropic's $895bn compute bill clouds its $100bn IPO

Funding and deals

• Anthropic. AI lab whose Q3 revenue hit $17bn, a 12-fold rise, though growth slowed to 47% quarter over quarter, raising about $100bn in its IPO.

Guest interviews

• John Foley, head of the Lex column at the Financial Times. Foley says the $900bn compute bill sounds enormous and may grow, though Anthropic's guidance of about $200bn revenue in 2028 would still exceed $100bn a year of compute spending. A $1.4tn valuation would not be ridiculous if that revenue materialises. He calls the price war a big risk and warns the expected junk credit rating will make funding more expensive.
• Deirdre Bosa, founder and host of Deirdre Bosa Live. Bosa says AI-linked debt issuance climbed from nearly $400bn in 2025 to about $655bn this year and is forecast at $1tn next year, with Microsoft alone pricing $25bn of bonds. Wall Street consensus expects more than $600bn of combined free cash flow from Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft by 2030. She says AWS grew nearly 40% and Google Cloud topped 100%, which keeps San Francisco as bullish as ever.
• Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Zandi splits the economy in two. The AI economy earns an A-plus-plus, with US equity value doubled in four years, while the three quarters of Americans who own little stock live in a D economy of falling real wages and mortgage rates above 7%. He grades the economy a B overall, blaming the Iran war and tariffs for high inflation and weak growth, and predicts a change in government after the midterms.

News

• AI stocks lose $5tn as Nasdaq enters correction. Microsoft fell 2% on the week and Alphabet 11% as the biggest AI and chip stocks shed about $5tn in a month. The Nasdaq 100 is off more than 10% from its peak.
• Apple beats revenue estimates in Ternus' first call. Apple shares climbed after the company beat revenue expectations in John Ternus' first earnings call as chief executive.
• Musk says Grok's serving costs outrun its revenue. Musk tweeted that serving Grok costs more than it earns, a concern Ed Elson says extends across the industry, where training and running models costs more than the revenue they bring in.
• Brent crude tumbles more than 7% on Iran hopes. The Dow rose on hopes for peace talks with Iran while the S&P 500 finished flat. Ten-year Treasury yields declined as the tech selloff deepened.