Anthropic posts $80bn loss in first half of 2026: WSJ

By Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters. Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026.

Key points

• As part of a series of exclusives from its IPO prospectus, reuters first documented in September that Anthropic posted a net loss of $42bn in 2025.
• The firm has benefited from the popularity of Claude Code, its coding assistant that developers apply to write software and build apps.
• Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment, and the report on the non-public information could not be immediately verified.
• Anthropic documented last week that AI could be months away from learning to self-replicate on everyday home devices.
• The loss figure was up from $13bn a year earlier, according to a draft prospectus, a legal document corporations submit to financial regulators, for its IPO.

As the market anticipates its looming initial public offering (IPO), anthropic, the artificial intelligence (AI) firm known for creating the chatbot Claude, recorded a net loss of more than $80bn in the first half of 2026, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, the corporation additionally indicated it could spend up to $750bn in coming years to acquire more computing capacity, including potential deals at present under discussion, the Journal noted on Tuesday.

In practice, the main driver for the loss was the $72bn in accounting charges related to changes in the value of convertible notes and other financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise funding, the report remarked.

In practice, the loss figure was up from $13bn a year earlier, according to a draft prospectus, a legal document corporations submit to financial regulators, for its IPO.

For context, the figures show the hefty costs of the AI race, even as investors look more closely at whether the funds businesses are pouring into chips and data centres will pay off.

Anthropic additionally shared a list of potential risk factors, including uncertainty over how to prevent its products from doing harm, whether through sophisticated cyberattacks or blackmail by uncontrolled models.

Meanwhile, the firm has benefited from the popularity of Claude Code, its coding assistant that developers apply to write software and build apps.

But some current and prospective investors who attended Anthropic's investor day in San Francisco, California, last week are weighing a lower valuation for the AI firm after its latest financial disclosures, four residents familiar with the matter informed Reuters.

In practice, the investors who attended the event discussed a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, three of the individuals stated, a significant step down from the roughly $2 trillion valuation previously projected for the November share sale.

While AI infrastructure spending almost quadrupled to almost $9bn, the Journal documented, anthropic's revenue jumped to $16.3bn in the six-month period that concluded June 30, up from $1.1bn a year ago.

In short, anthropic posts $80bn loss in first half of 2026: WSJ is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.