Anthropic has a $23.3 billion loss in one quarter

Bloomberg reports that the AI company Anthropic had revenue of almost $17 billion in one quarter. This is 12 times the revenue of a year before. But operating costs of $17.5 billion were more than the revenue, and the net loss was $23.3 billion. The New York Times reports that the planned share sale could get about $100 billion.

What drove the cost

Anthropic names two causes of the cost increase. The costs include short-term compute of $5 billion and donation matching by staff of $2 billion. It has had a compute shortage since last year.

The numbers

The new prospectus (the document for investors) shows $895 billion in commitments for compute and data center leases. Anthropic expects more than 3.5 gigawatts of power this year, and plans to double it next year.

What is not known

The source gives no date for a profit. It gives no date for the share sale. It does not tell how Anthropic will get money for the plan to double its power.

Insight: Anthropic must buy supply before it can sell more

Revenue is 12 times the revenue of a year before, but the commitments are $895 billion, more than 50 times the revenue of one quarter. Anthropic has deals with Amazon, Google and chipmakers. This reads as a race to get compute before rivals, and the firms with free capacity get the pricing power.