Exclusive-Anthropic hits $3 billion in annualized revenue on business demand for AI
The milestone, which projects the company's current sales over the course of a year, is a significant jump from December 2024 when the metric was nearly $1 billion, the sources said. The figure crossed $2 billion around the end of March, and at May's end it hit $3 billion, one of the sources said.
While consumers have embraced rival OpenAI's ChatGPT, a number of enterprises have limited their rollouts to experimentation, despite board-level interest in AI. Anthropic's revenue surge, largely from selling AI models as a service to other companies, is a data point showing how business demand is growing, one of the sources said.
A key driver is code generation. The San Francisco-based startup, backed by Google parent Alphabet and Amazon.com, is famous for AI that excels at computer programming. Products in the so-called codegen space have experienced major growth and adoption in recent months, often drawing on Anthropic's models.
This demand is setting Anthropic apart among software-as-a-service vendors. Its single-quarter revenue increases would count Anthropic as the fastest-growing SaaS company that at least one venture capitalist has ever seen.
"We've looked at the IPOs of over 200 public software companies, and this growth rate has never happened," said Meritech General Partner Alex Clayton, who is not an Anthropic investor and has no inside knowledge of its sales.
He cautioned that these comparisons are not fully precise, since Anthropic also has consumer revenue via subscriptions to its Claude chatbot. Still, by contrast, publicly traded SaaS company Snowflake took six quarters to go from $1 billion to $2 billion in such run-rate revenue, Clayton said.
Anthropic competitor OpenAI has projected it will end 2025 with more than $12 billion in total revenue, up from $3.7 billion last year, three people familiar with the matter said. This total revenue is different from an estimated annualized figure like Anthropic's. Reuters could not determine this metric for OpenAI.
The two rivals appear to be establishing their own swim lanes. While both offer enterprise and consumer products, OpenAI is shaping up to be a consumer-oriented company, and the majority of its revenue comes from subscriptions to its ChatGPT chatbot, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told Bloomberg late last year.
OpenAI has not reported enterprise-specific revenue but said in May that paying seats for its ChatGPT enterprise product have grown to 3 million, from 2 million in February, and that T-Mobile and Morgan Stanley are among its enterprise customers.
In the consumer race, Anthropic's Claude has seen less adoption than OpenAI. Claude's traffic, a proxy for consumer interest, was about 2 per cent of ChatGPT's in April, according to Web analytics firm Similarweb.
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by a team that departed OpenAI over differences in vision, closed a $3.5 billion fundraise earlier this year. That valued the company at $61.4 billion. OpenAI is currently valued at $300 billion.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
33 minutes ago
- CNA
CoreWeave to buy crypto miner Core Scientific in $9 billion deal
AI data center firm CoreWeave said on Monday it would buy crypto miner Core Scientific in an all-stock deal valued at about $9 billion. The offer represents a $20.40 per share value and implies a premium of nearly 66 per cent to Core Scientific stock's close before potential deal talks were first reported. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, and the final price will be determined at that time, the companies said.
CNA
36 minutes ago
- CNA
EU hopes for Trump tariff deal by July deadline after 'good exchange'
BRUSSELS: The European Union still aims to reach a trade deal with the United States by Jul 9 after Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump had a "good exchange", a Commission spokesperson said on Monday (Jul 7). It was not immediately clear, however, whether there had been a meaningful breakthrough in talks to stave off the imposition of sweeping tariff hikes on the United States' largest trading partner. The clock is ticking down on a deadline for countries around the world to conclude deals with the US after Trump unleashed a global trade war that has roiled financial markets and sent policymakers scrambling to protect their economies. TRUMP TOUTS TARIFF PROGRESS As he keeps much of the world guessing, Trump on Sunday said the US was close to finalising several trade pacts in coming days and would notify other countries by Jul 9 of higher tariff rates. He said they would not take effect until Aug 1, a three-week reprieve. He also put members of the developing nations' BRICS group in his sights as its leaders met in Brazil, threatening an additional 10 per cent tariff on any countries aligning themselves with the "anti-American" policies. The BRICS group comprises Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa along with recent joiners Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The EU has been torn over whether to push for a quick and light trade deal or back its own economic clout in trying to negotiate a better outcome. It had already dropped hopes for a comprehensive trade agreement before the July deadline. "We want to reach a deal with the US We want to avoid tariffs," the spokesperson told reporters at a daily briefing. "We want to achieve win-win outcomes, not lose-lose outcomes." IN TRADE DEALS, "TIME IS MONEY" Without a preliminary agreement, broad US tariffs on most imports would rise from their current 10% to the rates set out by Trump on Apr 2. In the EU's case that would be 20 per cent. Von der Leyen also held talks with the leaders of Germany, France and Italy at the weekend, Germany said. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has repeatedly stressed the need for a quick deal to protect industries vulnerable to tariffs ranging from cars to pharmaceuticals. "Time is money in the truest sense of the word," the German spokesperson told reporters in Berlin. "In this respect, we should give ourselves another 24 or 48 hours to come to a decision." Russia said the BRICS group had never tried to undermine other countries. "It is very important to note here that the uniqueness of a group like BRICS is that it is a group of countries that share common approaches and a common world view on how to cooperate, based on their own interests," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
CNA
an hour ago
- CNA
Dye & Durham investor Plantro calls for special meeting, urges sale of company, documents show
NEW YORK :Canadian legal software maker Dye & Durham's second biggest investor, Plantro Ltd, has launched a proxy fight to elect new directors and is pushing for a sale of the company, according to documents seen by Reuters. Plantro Ltd, which owns 11 per cent of Dye & Durham, told the company on Monday that it nominated three director candidates to the 7-person board and that it requisitioned a special meeting where shareholders would vote on the nominees. Its nominees would bring expertise in buying and selling companies, capital allocation, operations, technology and governance, Plantro said. The company nominated industry executives Brian Bidulka, David Danziger, and Martha Vallance, a former chief operating officer at Dye & Durham. It wants them to replace board chair Arnaud Ajdler and directors Tracey Keates and Ritu Khanna. A representative for Dye & Durham did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the three directors could not be immediately reached for comment. The investor, a company controlled by former Dye & Durham CEO Matthew Proud, previously asked Dye & Durham to stabilize its executive ranks, divest the financial services division, and later this year work on selling the remaining core business. Now Plantro is turning up the heat. Selling the financial services unit is not enough to solve the company's problems and the share price would continue to sink if Dye & Durham remained a publicly traded company, it argued. Plantro wants a full sale immediately, arguing this is the only way to realize a control premium for shareholders and restore stability in the business. The stock has lost 42 per cent of its value since January and is worth roughly $488 million. Plantro said new blood is needed in the boardroom because current directors refuse to engage with potential buyers. It also said there are parties that would want to buy the company but did not identify those parties. The company acknowledged in February it had received an unsolicited takeover bid for C$20 a share but it was not engaging with the party. Dye & Durham last year hired Goldman Sachs as a strategic adviser to review options but in November said it was pausing its review after feedback from shareholders.
