Anthropic declined to comment.
The startup led by Dario Amodei filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, putting the company in a quiet period that limits public announcements about its financial performance.
Anthropic has gained ground on rivals OpenAI and Google this year, releasing models that have outperformed competitors while focusing on sales to business customers. The group announced in May that its annualized revenue had surpassed $47 billion.
Venture capitalists, sovereign wealth funds, and other institutional investors have poured just under $100 billion into the company in 2026. Anthropic’s valuation leapfrogged OpenAI’s for the first time in May, reaching $965 billion, including the new investment.
But the group also faces considerable uncertainty. It has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration and remains in active litigation against the US Department of Defense, which labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk earlier this year.
Anthropic has since been forced to briefly pull its leading models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after being hit with export controls by the Commerce Department in June. The episode spooked some customers who rely on Anthropic models.
Customers are also increasingly sensitive to the price of accessing the best models. Faced with spiraling costs, they have, in some cases, reversed directives for employees to maximize their AI use and opted for less powerful, cheaper models.
Anthropic’s market-leading model costs more than two and a half times as much to use as OpenAI’s flagship, while Chinese open-weight alternatives, which have also improved dramatically this year, are a fraction of the cost, according to Artificial Analysis, which analyzes AI models.
Anthropic increased its market share among US businesses last month, according to data from payments group Ramp. But analysts at the company found that businesses were “hitting their limit on AI spend” and turning to cheaper alternatives.
“It’s easy to come up with challenges,” said an Anthropic investor who has also backed AI groups including OpenAI and SpaceX, which went public at a $1.77 trillion valuation in June. “But the company continues to be in first position in performance, positioning, and what people want exposure to.”
Additional reporting by Zijing Wu and Ivan Levingston.
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