Anthropic Reportedly Set for First-Ever Operating Profit as Q2 Revenue Grows 130%

Anthropic, the developer of the Claude family of artificial-intelligence models, has emerged as one of OpenAI’s most closely watched rivals. Rapid adoption by corporate customers has strengthened the company’s revenue outlook and investor appetite. A listing at a valuation of as much as $2 trillion could eclipse SpaceX and become the largest initial public offering on record, underscoring Wall Street’s enthusiasm for generative AI.

Anthropic began preparations for an IPO in 2026 and could move ahead as early as the autumn. Second-quarter revenue increased fourteenfold and the company turned profitable, while annualized revenue climbed to $65 billion. The Wall Street Journal also reported that Anthropic’s internal projections put its long-term potential revenue above $30 trillion, an exceptionally bullish estimate helping support investor expectations for a record valuation.

Competition in generative artificial intelligence is increasingly being measured by commercial traction as well as model performance. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, has emerged as OpenAI’s strongest challenger, with Claude Code gaining adoption among developers and businesses. The shift matters because revenue growth and operating leverage are becoming key tests of whether heavy investment in AI infrastructure can translate into sustainable businesses.

Anthropic generated $11.6 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2026 and posted a small operating profit, The Wall Street Journal reported. That marked the first time it surpassed OpenAI, which recorded $6.7 billion in revenue during the period. Anthropic’s advance was driven largely by the continued success of Claude Code, while slowing growth at ChatGPT contributed to widening losses at OpenAI, according to the report.

Anthropic and OpenAI are competing to dominate the commercial market for generative artificial intelligence, expanding through model subscriptions, application programming interfaces and enterprise services. Annual recurring revenue, or ARR, extrapolates the current revenue pace over 12 months and is not the same as revenue already booked. Even so, the measure offers investors and customers a gauge of demand, business momentum and the companies’ ability to finance costly computing infrastructure.

As of July 2026, the latest data put Anthropic’s ARR at $74.1 billion, well above OpenAI’s $41.3 billion and giving the Claude developer a substantial lead in commercial scale. OpenAI is closing the gap rapidly, however, with its annualized revenue climbing nearly 30% over the past two months. The acceleration underscores intensifying competition between the two AI companies for enterprise customers, computing capacity and the revenue needed to support further model development.

Anthropic, the developer of the Claude family of models, is seeing revenue and computing demand rise as corporate appetite for generative AI grows. With model training and inference costs climbing, the company is expanding its use of Google’s custom-built TPUs and tapping Broadcom’s chip expertise, reshaping competition among cloud providers, AI chipmakers and power markets.

Anthropic most recently disclosed that its annualized revenue had surpassed $30 billion. It has also reached a next-generation TPU supply agreement with Google and Broadcom, securing about 3.5 GW of computing capacity that is expected to come online in phases beginning in 2027. Separate reports said the company plans to spend about $200 billion on Google Cloud over the next five years to support Claude’s global operations.

Founded by former OpenAI researchers in 2021, Anthropic focuses on its Claude models and enterprise AI. Claude Code has brought generative AI into software development and become a major revenue driver. The company’s refusal to allow its AI to be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons has put it at odds with the U.S. Department of Defense, with implications for government procurement and AI safety rules.

A March 3, 2026 report showed Anthropic’s annualized revenue had surpassed $19 billion, more than double the $9 billion recorded at the end of 2025 and up from about $14 billion just weeks earlier. The company completed a $30 billion Series G funding round on February 12 at a post-money valuation of $380 billion. The Pentagon formally designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk on March 5, but Claude added more than 1 million users per day that week.