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Anthropic tells investors it will be profitable for second straight quarter

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/anthropic-tells-investors-it-will-be-profitable-second-straight-quarter-ft-2026-09-13/
40•alephnerd•59m ago

Comments

jqpabc123•54m ago
Yes, but --- using something they call "adjusted operating income".

This is reportedly a sort of "Enron" accounting which excludes some really big expenses like revenue sharing, the cost of model training and hardware deploymments which are kept off the corporate balance sheet using "special finance vehicles".

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence...

mixdup•31m ago
It's really easy to be profitable when you exclude all of your expenses
sigmar•28m ago
>This is reportedly a sort of "Enron" accounting which excludes some really big expenses like revenue sharing, the cost of model training and hardware deploymments

source? this seems false. reportedly the adjusted profitability includes inference and amortized training costs

jqpabc123•20m ago
source?

Listed at the end of my post.

this seems false.

Source showing this in accordance with GAAP (Generally Acceptable Accounting Prectices)?

sigmar•15m ago
that says only that the gross margin calculation excludes profit sharing and training. You should read it more carefully
throwaway85825•38m ago
GAAP or non GAAP profitable?
datadrivenangel•31m ago
non GAAP. If they were GAAP profitable they either wouldn't be sharing or would be IPOing already.
JumpCrisscross•8m ago
> If they were GAAP profitable they either wouldn't be sharing or would be IPOing already

They'd be in their quiet period...

altmanaltman•37m ago
> Anthropic's gross margins are above 80% before accounting for revenue shared with distribution partners, including Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, and the cost of training its model, the newspaper said.

Yes the company known for famously training 1 model

sobiolite•35m ago
Well fortunately now we're gonna be Pacing the Frontier.
unreal6•33m ago
I cynically wonder how much of this "pacing" is a mutual decision to reduce training expenditure costs as OpenAI and Anthropic plan to IPO.
stackskipton•27m ago
My guess is a ton. According to https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-just-st..., they are asking for exception to anti trust as this type of collaboration would normally be massive anti trust violation.
thewebguyd•25m ago
Or they've hit diminishing returns that will collapse their valuation, so saying "this is a threat to humanity" sounds better than "This is about as good as the tech is going to be for a long time" to investors.
layer8•
nemomarx•32m ago
"profitable without COGS" doesn't actually mean anything at all does it?
JumpCrisscross•9m ago
Profitable without Capex, i.e. gross margin. Inference is included in COGS. Capex (training) is not. That's reasonable.
mrweasel•8m ago
Is that basically: We'd be making money, if we didn't have to build the product?
darkwizard42•27m ago
Seeing a lot of tricks similar to how ridesharing companies tried to be "profitable" before going to IPO. Caveat: Thing have materially improved but really Uber is carried by its insane Ads margins

The idea of removing model training from your costs is a little wild tbh.

The profitability of being able to serve a query wasn't really under question (nor is the margin expected to be anything less than 80%+) I think.

sphinxterai•22m ago
Well then you haven't listened to Ed Zitron or any of the other AI bubble doomers. His contention is that its worthless and they lose money on every query.
embedding-shape•17m ago
But isn't he taking all the costs into account, that created the experience? Rather than just literally the inference/serving infrastructure? Bananas way of calculating things if so, doesn't match reality at all.
JumpCrisscross•10m ago
Zitron is worthless–lying about numbers and not correcting the record when you're called out means you aren't trustworthy. Worse than that if you directionally agree with him, which I do.
embedding-shape•18m ago
> The idea of removing model training from your costs is a little wild tbh.

Yeah, I didn't believe they'd claim something like that. But yes indeed, from the article:

> Anthropic's gross margins are above 80% before accounting for revenue shared with distribution partners, including Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, and the cost of training its model,

Is this how all AI companies calculate if they're profitable or not, by removing the highest costs? What a circus.

ChrisBland•26m ago
GAPP or ACSOI? Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income from the groupon days....
GiorgioG•22m ago
This is Enron-level fraud. What would Ford/GM/Toyota's gross margins be without the cost of manufacturing vehicles?
maerF0x0•13m ago
That's a bit hyperbolic. It's closer to using EBITDA as your "earnings" and bucketing model costs in a rapid depreciation model (which is fair, I'd assume a model is good for more than just 1 year...
JumpCrisscross•8m ago
It's gross margin. Not including training in gross margin is perfectly reasonable.
judge2020•10m ago
More similar to if they took out the cost to design the cars and all the many levels of corporate overhead they have in the form of middle management.
cdrnsf•16m ago
I imagine there are many other businesses that would be profitable if they excluded all of their largest costs from their reporting.
jimmydoe•16m ago
very convoluted, number game but probably works for casual investors who just want to put money in something.
maherbeg•7m ago
Is this community adjusted EBITDA?
32m ago
The “opens new tab” sometimes drives me insane when using TTS to listen to Reuters articles. I’m assuming they are using the wrong CSS/markup for the purpose.
aesthesia•14m ago
> The profitability of being able to serve a query wasn't really under question

In one sense, yes, but I do see people question it regularly.

throwawaysleep•9m ago
> The profitability of being able to serve a query wasn't really under question (nor is the margin expected to be anything less than 80%+) I think.

HN had long debates about whether AI inference could even be affordable from a compute perspective.

JumpCrisscross•9m ago
> idea of removing model training from your costs is a little wild tbh

It's one of several metrics and tries to estimate steady-state profitability. It's the only one being leaked because it's the most sensational one. But don't assume cash-flow profitability is negative just because you don't know it.

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