Anthropic told potential IPO investors at a private meeting in San Francisco that third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, roughly 45% higher than in the second quarter, according to Cory Weinberg at The Information. That’s a sharp slowdown from the more than 140% quarter-over-quarter jump in the second quarter, when Claude Code demand surged, and some attendees now think bankers should aim for a valuation below $1.5 trillion in the November IPO instead of the $2 trillion some have floated. Anthropic also estimated that between 5% and 7% of revenue is distillation, meaning other companies paying to query Claude and using the answers to build rival models, and said it expects that revenue to shrink.
