Explosive growth on the road to a public listing

Anthropic, the company behind the AI assistant Claude, disclosed in May 2026 that its annualized revenue had surpassed $47 billion. That represents a dramatic jump from the roughly $9 billion run rate the company was tracking toward at the end of 2025. The surge comes as the company is actively preparing for an initial public offering, TechCrunch reports.

Co-founder and President Daniela Amodei has dismissed doubts about whether the AI sector is actually delivering sufficient value for the enormous capital being poured into it. But the fundamental debate over return on AI investment is far from settled.

The growth is impressive — but the question is whether the revenue can justify the astronomical infrastructure costs

The cost gap no one can ignore

The AI sector ranks among the most capital-intensive in the technology industry. According to industry analyses, new AI data centers built in 2025 will incur roughly $40 billion in annual depreciation while expected to generate only $15 to $20 billion in combined revenue for their owners. That means the industry as a whole needs to grow revenue tenfold just to cover costs and hit capital return targets.

The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for technology and software companies is estimated at between 9 and 14 percent in 2026, adding further pressure on profitability expectations.

$47B
Anthropic's annualized revenue (May 2026)
$40B
Estimated annual depreciation for new AI data centers built in 2025
Anthropic races toward IPO with $47 billion in revenue — but skeptics are watching - Bilde 1

What customers are actually experiencing

On the customer side, the picture is mixed. More than half — 53 percent — of professional organizations say they are already seeing a positive return on their AI investments. But a 2023 IBM study found that only 25 percent of AI initiatives delivered the expected ROI, and just 16 percent scaled successfully across the business. Boston Consulting Group similarly reported that 74 percent of companies have yet to document concrete value from their AI investments.

Where success stories do exist, however, they are striking: BMW reduced unplanned downtime by 25 percent and maintenance costs by 18 percent over 18 months using AI-powered predictive maintenance. General Mills saved more than $20 million through AI-driven supply chain optimization. And in customer service, AI is estimated to cut support costs by 20 to 40 percent.

Infrastructure and talent are driving costs

For companies like Anthropic, cost pressure is substantial. Energy consumption is one of the major challenges: queries to large language models consume an estimated nearly ten times as much electricity as a Google search, and energy demand across the AI sector is expected to grow by 160 percent through 2030. Competition for specialized AI talent is also fierce, with compensation levels pushing operating costs sharply higher.

The IPO will be a reality check

For Anthropic, the public listing will serve as a direct test of whether the market buys the growth story. The revenue trajectory is undeniably steep, but investors and analysts will have to judge whether it can be sustained long enough to justify the capital structures the company is built on.

Revenue quintupled in under half a year — now the question is whether that pace can be maintained

The source of the massive revenue gains lies in a broad enterprise customer base paying for Claude access via API and enterprise subscriptions. But in an industry where the majority of customers have yet to document the returns they expected, there is no guarantee that ongoing subscriptions will be renewed at the same rate at which they were originally signed.