Anthropic logged net loss of over $80 billion in first half of 2026

[u/CarciaNerissa]

https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-recorded-net-loss-over-80-billion-first-half-this-year-wsj-reports-2026-10-20/

[u/wembenbama]

I mean this is actually insane.

[u/2011StlCards → u/wembenbama]

I know, ive seen enough. Move that IPO up to $3 trillion

[u/taurusApart → u/2011StlCards]

The article says investors are worried and might lower the valuation to... $1.5 trillion. 

These mf's are gambling with the entire world economy on vibes. 

"Valuation? Yeah idk, +/- 500 billion. We'll see what their aura is next month"

[u/herworkthrowaway → u/taurusApart]

anthropic is apparently more valuable than the entire country of spain

[u/O2XXX → u/herworkthrowaway]

Clearly tech bros have never eaten tapas.

[u/Balsamic_ducks → u/O2XXX]

How are you supposed to B2B tapas sales?

[u/ConfessSomeMeow → u/Balsamic_ducks]

TAAS - Tapas as a service!

[u/Balsamic_ducks → u/ConfessSomeMeow]

Are you satisfied with your current tapas provider?

[u/Justin_123456 → u/Balsamic_ducks]

Honestly, I’d love to go with someone else, but these tiny plates just keep coming and the disruption and switching costs just aren’t worth it.

[u/aslander → u/ConfessSomeMeow]

TAPAS is already an acronym for Tiny Ass Plates as a Service

[u/Jelal → u/Balsamic_ducks]

Somebody had to learn something about B2B tapas sales after blowing $80 Billion in the first half of 2026.

[u/Opposite_Diamond_662 → u/herworkthrowaway]

That's comparing one year of GDP to a market capitalization. Spain is "worth" way more than 2 trillion in wealth/value

[u/ArrogantAstronomer → u/Opposite_Diamond_662]

Okay one Portugal then

[u/tenaciousdeev → u/ArrogantAstronomer]

It's one Portugal, Michael. How much could it be worth? $10?

[u/OldWar1111 → u/tenaciousdeev]

There's always money in the cured pig products.

[u/howieyang1234 → u/Opposite_Diamond_662]

If we give countries a PE ratio of 10, then it’s worth one Greece (GDP around 200 bln USD).

[u/stevejobs4525 → u/howieyang1234]

Greece is a 6x pe at max, it's the Ford of countries

[u/Iazo → u/howieyang1234]

I dunno man. I actually think that countries should be more PE. I think that Greece is going to be around for far longer than Anthropic.

That said, the GDP is not earnings. You would be looking at the national budget, which depends on each country, but a fair rule of thumb for a developed country would be 33% of GDP.

[u/dreamwinder → u/herworkthrowaway]

If our investment system wasn’t as fraudulent as our politicians, the only people this shitpile could bring down are its insane investors. But it is, so they’ll all get bailed out.

[u/Wizywig → u/taurusApart]

This is fine. As long as we are okay with letting them crash and burn and force them to pay for the damages.

We can solve this. This isn't an unsolvqbke (edit: unsolvable) issue.

Bail out the people not the companies.

[u/keelhaulrose → u/Wizywig]

Better get out and vote for candidates that won't bail these techbros out, because historically the harder you crash, the more your bailout.

[u/tMoneyMoney → u/Wizywig]

Nobody’s going to force them to pay for damages. They’ll be gliding away in a golden parachute.

[u/asyork → u/tMoneyMoney]

Even more likely, their companies will get bailed out, they will be huge bonuses for "persuading" the politicians, and will be given time to pay back the bailouts while they change the companies to operate more sustainably, all while deciding what industry to do the exact same thing to as soon as the economy just barely recovers enough to sustain it.

[u/GooseBash → u/Wizywig]

lol what reality do you live in ? Since when do rich people ever suffer repercussions ? It’s very rare.

[u/ThaneduFife → u/taurusApart]

They've been gambling the entire economy on vibes since the 1980s. There was only about a 40-year period where we regulated the worst economic speculation/gambling out of existence.

[u/seamusmcduffs → u/2011StlCards]

Only a truly revolutionary company could lose this much money this fast

[u/zoro_juro13 → u/seamusmcduffs]

This reminds me of the dude in squidgames who basically said this 😅 so you know how respected you have to be to get loans this big?!

[u/False_Raven → u/2011StlCards]

Rookie numbers

[u/RookieMistake101 → u/False_Raven]

Hell yea, pump those numbers up

[u/ineyy → u/wembenbama]

Not only do they need to net zero first, they have billions they need to pay back too.

[u/junkyard_robot → u/ineyy]

Yeah, but when everything collapses, none of that matters because they owe so much money that is tied up in pension funds that the taxpayers will be forced to bail them out.

[u/Drokstab → u/junkyard_robot]

It's also quite likely that they liquidate and sell off their data centers and tech for pennies on the dollar to competitors. Hope that you're first in line to get a payout on the biggest bankruptcy in history.

[u/BiDiTi → u/Drokstab]

They don’t even have data centers, haha - it’s a full Enron situation.

[u/CarlFromHungerForce8 → u/BiDiTi]

It's like leveraging yourself 20:1 on new types of cars that half the time just explode. This AI bubble is insane.

I actually think some of its applications is very useful, but that doesnt mean it will be profitable especially with all the competition from not only other companies but entire nations.

[u/FirstAid84 → u/Drokstab]

Except they don’t own data centers.
That’s all rented compute power.

[u/Zuwxiv → u/FirstAid84]

lol. Lmao even.

How are they losing this money money while renting.

It's fundamentally not like other tech companies. The argument for an app's valuation is that the cost to have a million users isn't that different from the cost to have 10 million users, so you can lose fucktons of money but get profitable when a billion people use you.

AI is just losing money providing the service. If they grow to 10x users, they lose 10x as much money. The business model has more in common with a restaurant than it does with Google. If someone told you their restaurant lost $80 billion dollars this year, but they plan to expand to have 100x as many restaurants...

lol. lmao, even

[u/Ivence → u/Zuwxiv]

Yeah, there's no path to profitability for them. None. They have to subsidize every user in order to keep people from fleeing in sticker shock at the actual cost to run these things.

You can't loss leader your entire fucking business model.

[u/sportydolphin → u/Zuwxiv]

They're taking a MASSIVE bet that the tech improves astronomically/exponentially becomes cheaper, and we all know that the future tech scene is very easy to predict /s

[u/Adventurous-Map7959 → u/sportydolphin]

They asked their LLM model, and it said that it was a great question and not to worry.

[u/12345623567 → u/sportydolphin]

Either the tech becomes so good that all white-collar jobs become obsolete, in which case the economy crashes, or they fail and... take the economy down with them.

(Neither will happen, the future is slow torture and decline, but you get what I'm saying)

[u/burnedbygemini → u/junkyard_robot]

Or, you know, we tax the billionaires

[u/frequenZphaZe → u/burnedbygemini]

there's limits to how much billionaire taxes can fix. when the frontier AI labs crash out, they're taking so much of the economy with them that taxing billionaires wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket. billionaire taxes could have easily saved us from getting into this position because we wouldn't have had a hand-full of psychopaths choosing to bet then entire economy on a non-existent AI god. at this point though? the only trick they've got is to spin up the money printer

[u/inspectoroverthemine → u/frequenZphaZe]

there's limits to how much billionaire taxes can fix

Lets find out what those limits are.

[u/tragedy_strikes → u/junkyard_robot]

There's nothing to bail out. They'll be dead and gone. They have a few offices and maybe a (relatively) small handful of servers internally. They rent everything else.

[u/TowardsTheImplosion → u/tragedy_strikes]

Their debt. Their debt gets bailed out. Because their debt is held by institutions TBTF.

[u/PsychoticMessiah → u/TowardsTheImplosion]

Yep. You owe a bank a millions dollars that’s your problem. You owe a bank billions of dollars that’s the banks problem.

[u/BiDiTi → u/TowardsTheImplosion]

Yeah, it’s Nvidia, Blackrock, and Microsoft that get bailed out.

Dario laughs his way to the bank.

The market burns.

[u/Ive_seen_things_that → u/wembenbama]

I'm trying to imagine what losing $80B would even look like. Is this wages? Hardware? What are they spending $80B on? 

[u/chickadee_guy → u/Ive_seen_things_that]

When people were tokenmaxxing they lost a fuck ton of money. They have to spend $7 to make $1. Solid business!

[u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748 → u/chickadee_guy]

This is why we have to pay CEO’s so much money, I would have never thought you could even do this.

[u/PinHaunting7192 → u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748]

Even countries would go bankcrupt at this kind of deficit. Yes, I am serious. Even the two countries currently duking it out in eastern Europe are not running even close to this high of a loss in six months. If they were, their state would collapse.

[u/devAcc123 → u/PinHaunting7192]

I didn’t believe you but just looked it up and yeah lol, this is nearly 1-1 inline with russias state budget deficit for 2026. That’s crazy

[u/chickadee_guy → u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748]

AI is the only tech ive ever seen that loses more money the more people use it

[u/goog1e → u/chickadee_guy]

It's actually insane. I use it VERY amateurishly at work, and it's devastating how long it processes my stupid commands. I've probably used more compute power on AI since my work started using it a few months ago, than I have in the rest of my life until now.

There's no way anyone is gonna pay what this amount of power actually costs. Tech giants maybe, but not all the smaller players who are integrating it for minor process improvement right now.

[u/na-uh → u/goog1e]

The only reason AI is getting any traction nowadays is that they're giving it away practically for free. If they'd changed what it cost to provide from the outset the bubble would never have even formed.

They're going to have to charge so much for the tokens to even get to revenue neutral that it will become nonviable for anyone but the richest to use. Like dollars-per-token level pricing.

[u/ChepaukPitch → u/na-uh]

Also because of the bubble. If you show you have integrated AI in your company your valuation goes up. So everyone has an incentive to fake AI integration.

[u/wimpymist → u/goog1e]

I think they are really gambling that the tech will drastically improve. I just don't see it happening

[u/edfitz83 → u/chickadee_guy]

They might lose money on each transaction, but they make up for it in massive volume.

Edit, so someone doesn’t understand sarcasm.

[u/FishFart → u/chickadee_guy]

When they say AI is a threat to humanity, they mean it will bankrupt the global economy

[u/EduinBrutus → u/FishFart]

For sure.

But here's the beauty.

If it did work as claimed and became a profitable business based on the alleged capability of the tech it would still bankrupt the global economy from the loss of so much employement and economic Demand.

[u/toofine → u/chickadee_guy]

Best part is they're cooking the books.

Leather Jacket Man is telling ya that computer parts running at 100% 24/7 won't have to be replaced every 3 years anymore, physics decided to let him work for 6 years. Because "AI" magic I guess.

[u/Apprehensive-Air5097 → u/Ive_seen_things_that]

They didn't lose 80b that's the explanation. Your gut instinct that it sounds crazy is correct because It is crazy it just didn't happen people are not even reading the article and the headline is designed to trick you. "The loss, up from $13 billion a year earlier, was driven by $72 billion in accounting charges tied to changes in the value of financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise money, the report said, citing a draft prospectus for its IPO."

This is just them having debts that are going to be paid in shares and calculating it as a loss in terms of how much the value of the shares grew based on the 2T valuation . Their actual loses are 8b.

[u/mcmonky → u/Apprehensive-Air5097]

What are the carryover consequences or benefits of that level of loss from an accounting standpoint?

[u/joshTheGoods → u/mcmonky]

the 8bn? that's all net operating loss carryforward. They can use that money to offset 80% of their future taxable income.

as for the 72b ... it's basically meaningless. it represents the value created for shareholders over the last year, and they can cash that out on the open market after Anthropic IPOs.

[u/Tr0janSword → u/Apprehensive-Air5097]

It's funny how even the article does a poor job explaining this.

The loss doesn't matter. It's simply due to accounting standards.

Amazon and Google invested in Anthropic a few years ago. Those investments were structured as convertible preferred notes that convert into shares at a conversion price. For exmaple, you own a $1m convertible bond, they will convert into 100,000 shares, the conversion price is $10. So, if the stock price is above >$10, you will convert that bond into shares.

Now, any type of convertible note is essentially a hybrid security with an embedded call option. The call option is a financial derivative, which gives the owner of it the right to buy shares at a certain price. In the example I gave, $10 is that price. The seller of that call option has to 'sell' those shares at $10 even if the stock is actually trading at $15.

So, Amazon and Google invested in these converts when Anthropic was valued <$200 bn. The company recently issued equity at $965 bn to other investors, so that embedded call option Amazon and Google own keeps increasing in value (they have the right to buy Anthropic's shares at $200 when they're actually worth $965)

Anthropic 'sold' the call option to them, so they have a massive paper loss, which they have to recognize on the income statement due to 'accounting standards'. However, it means nothing because Anthropic will just issue them shares they are owed (the convertible notes are converted into shares). Cash isn't being exchanged. It's really just a weird quirk of accounting and the structure of a venture capital investment.

[u/Ok-Car2569 → u/Ive_seen_things_that]

Theoretical space in theoretical datacenters that are all theoretically worth 10+trillion but no planned build date.

[u/jeffwulf → u/Ive_seen_things_that]

72 billion of the losses are just accounting losses due to the company being estimated as more valuable.

[u/unknown_human → u/wembenbama]

AI bubble pop is gonna be nasty

[u/peachesgp → u/unknown_human]

The fun part is that it's gonna hurt the economy just about as much as AI taking everyone's jobs would have. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[u/NotAcutallyaPanda → u/peachesgp]

Hey. That doesn’t sound like fun at all.

[u/alfooboboao → u/peachesgp]

…or we could’ve not fallen for any of this tech sociopath singularity bullshit in the first place, and instead just surgically supported the development of AI-assisted vaccines, cancer treatments etc.

they threw the entire goddamn economy away on a chatbot they keep warning us will destroy the world, but we have to build it, because god forbid China destroys the world instead of America. and yet tons of chuds genuinely believe that if we can just give the tech billionaires enough power and money, they’ll suddenly change into altruistic and benevolent rulers and take care of us dirty peasants out of the kindness of their hearts

[u/geo_prog → u/peachesgp]

I don’t think it will actually have much of an impact on the economy at large. The stock market is not the economy. These companies are not really creating jobs for a significant number of people even when you factor in data center construction. It will hurt investment accounts but investments don’t drive consumer spending and the majority of people don’t have significant investment savings anyway.

Globally, economies are stagnating because people don’t have the cash flow to keep spending on things like food, housing, recreation, education or consumer goods. Particularly because the people who do hold the wealth are too busy cutting costs to drive up market cap rather than focus on actual productive output.

If you give 10 million people with no money an extra $10000 dollars you’re going to have a billion going back into the economy that generates tax revenue to build bridges or hospitals. Instead we have wealthy people pouring hundreds of billions into stocks creating paper wealth that doesn’t feed anyone and doesn’t generate a tax revenue to support infrastructure.

[u/peachesgp → u/geo_prog]

I think you're underestimating investor panic, especially when a lot of companies are staking their future profits to how much they think AI will help them cut labor costs.

[u/Texuk1 → u/peachesgp]

They are also underestimating the current macroeconomic forces that would have cause a recession but for the A.I. boom.

[u/toofine → u/wembenbama]

The rich don't get taxed enough and this is what they do with the dollars. Zuck accomplished the annihilation of $80 billion as well. And this garbage is supposed to improve your lives more than access to high speed rail?

[u/PossibleVariety7927 → u/wembenbama]

This is misleading as hell. 72 billion of that, is paper losses. Basically, to really dumb it down, lenders have deals with Anthropic where they get more shares based on how much the company is worth. As it raises in valuation, so does the lenders equity stake.

Because Anthropic got so highly valued, they had to effectively distribute 72b worth of equity shares to the lenders. It's just convertible notes. This would have happened to ANY company of this size, using these sort of convertible notes.

It's a paper loss, not a capital loss. It's a loss in total value of the company becuause it was given to lenders as part of a deal.

The real net spending was ~8b with revenue of 16b.

So if it wasn't for the paper loss in equity, which is unavoidable, it's technically an 8b profit.

But I know this sub is anti-AI and will gladly just believe any misleading headline if it fits the circle jerk. So feel free to just ignore me.

[u/fastfirefox909 → u/wembenbama]

Humanity is high on capitalism and has gone batshit insane.

[u/CowboyLaw → u/wembenbama]

If you think THIS is insane, you should read their IPO prospectus and see how much they believe they’ll need to spend on data centers and related infrastructure in the next few years. Spoiler: it’s hundreds of billions.

[u/AstralElement → u/wembenbama]

That’s $235 for every person in the US.

[u/Andromeda321 → u/wembenbama]

I believe $80 billion is comparable to the entire federal research budget during this time period. Insane indeed.

[u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

I just want to clear this up. They didn't actually "lose" 80 billion dollars. 72 billion of that 80 is something called a change in fair value of convertible notes.

A convertible note is a way of financing a company, more commonly used in startups. It involves the company taking on debt in exchange for a convertible note, which, can either be paid back for the cash value of the debt plus interest, or, as the name suggests, can be converted for equity.

For example, if I have a lemonade stand worth 100 dollars and I borrow $1 in exchange for 1% of my lemonade stand. The investor's claim to equity is worth $1. Now in a year if my stand is now worth $300, the investor can either ask for his $1 back plus interest, or he can convert that into equity and ask for his 1%. Now since at the time of financing his share was worth $1 and now it is worth $3, it's technically a $2 loss for me (the lemonade stand) even though I didn't actually lose money. The reason this system is common among startups is that it mitigates risk for the investor: if the company does good, they get equity. If it does bad and their equity is worth less than whatever they invested, they get the cash back.

This 80 billion dollar loss is not actually an 80 billion dollar loss. Nowhere close. Their operating loss was 8 billion — still high but not 80. And the IRS agrees: change in fair value of convertible notes is not a deductible loss for tax purposes because you didn't actually lose money.

[u/PoopyisSmelly → u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

So they lost 8 billion net you are saying?

[u/dravenonred → u/PoopyisSmelly]

"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money" - Sen. Everett Dirksen

[u/faraday326 → u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

Good luck and Godspeed trying to bring factual information to this discussion on this sub. They want a headline and they got their headline and they’re gonna go down eating up the headline they wanted.

[u/Cedex → u/faraday326]

Look to be honest, I'm just here waiting for the bankruptcy auction so I can get a GPU.

[u/FirstDivision → u/faraday326]

The comment is at the top now. Assuming it is factually correct, it certainly is refreshing that the top comment is highlighting why the headline is clickbait and explaining the real story.

It reminds me of “the old Reddit” where every post had a comment like this at the top to dissuade the hive mind from going out of control.

I was going to say “the old internet”, but clickbait wasn’t even a thing I remember from my “old internet”, but perhaps I’m wearing rose-colored glasses.

[u/redJackal222 → u/FirstDivision]

The comment is at the top now.

It's like halfway down the page for me

[u/DunEvenWorryBoutIt → u/redJackal222]

Top comment is "I mean this is actually insane"

[u/aioli_boi → u/FirstDivision]

So you don't even know if the comment is factually correct but you're using it as some sort of standard of factual correctness for what you imagine Old Reddit lived up to? Don't you understand the irony in that statement?

[u/No_Berry2976 → u/aioli_boi]

It’s comment that can be verified or debunked. That’s always better than comments where people don’t use arguments.

Now let’s look at a few other comments with a large amount of votes: a lot of those comments are simply repeating the headline and add cynicism and sarcasm. Those people haven’t even bothered to read the article.

[u/bigdaddtcane → u/FirstDivision]

The comment is stating that the way the are “losing” money is more complicated than just paying people. That is typically not a great sign. In addition to the fact that they aren’t truly losing that money, they should highlight how they aren’t truly making as much money as their revenues show.

The accounting is circular and confusing on purpose. The hyperscalers and Nvidia give anthropic cash, compute and chips as a convertible loan (“loss of money”) and then Antropic uses that to sign huge contracts with the hyperscalers that they don’t actually pay for and call it revenue. So for Anthropic, the loses aren’t real and the gains aren’t real. It’s all fake money to them.

To Google and Microsoft though.. that money is gone.

[u/timetogetjuiced → u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

Ah, so the company is rediculously overvalued , got it

[u/jmlinden7 → u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

Potential equity dilution is still a liability to current shareholders.

[u/KHRZ]

My company spent literally $50000 in API tokens for just me during that time. WTF guys

[u/ThadeousCheeks → u/KHRZ]

That 50k in usage cost them millions. Hope that helps.

[u/-M-o-X- → u/ThadeousCheeks]

I’m doing my part burning compute on ridiculous nonsense

[u/bigevilbrain → u/-M-o-X-]

I’m encouraged to use all my tokens. Company is paying for tokens and if you don’t use them they expire.

[u/Similar-Low-3114 → u/bigevilbrain]

I have loops running what does this ticket do and what does this pr do on my teams repos and have it give me a morning report. Stuff I would do anyway throughout the week but the company asked for max token usage so I’m doing my part with the nonsense

[u/bigevilbrain → u/Similar-Low-3114]

I cannot even get close to max usage, even doing the stupidest stuff. I have dashboards, I never personally interact with Jira or Gitlab. Code reviews, implementations, dashboards for everything. I’m at like 25%.

Coding output has never been the issue anyway. Anyway, it’s all so ridiculous.

[u/Zenigen → u/bigevilbrain]

You guys have limits?

My company has a dashboard showing everyone's usage costs, and #1 and 2 are both clearing $100k a month in tokens

[u/Mouthshitter → u/Zenigen]

Dude that sounds insane, just hire a person... The company is just burning money. this is happening in so many corporations and antropic and openai are still losing billions too, mind boggling

[u/JerryCooke → u/Mouthshitter]

Seriously, I’ll never understand why companies have lost the concept of investing in people. You could get some truly excellent talent for that kind of money 🤦🏻‍♀️

[u/Gliesese → u/ThadeousCheeks]

I’ve heard they actually have a massive markup on API pricing, only around 5% of the cost is used on electricity and hardware degradation. But they also give a max plan around $20k of API tokens per month for $200, so around a $800 loss for each subscription.

[u/mnilailt → u/Gliesese]

Do you mean 2k?

[u/Gliesese → u/mnilailt]

No it’s about $5k per week so around $20k a month in API tokens for the max subscription. But the API prices are crazy and pretty much only paid by big companies with deep pockets

[u/Qwertysapiens → u/Gliesese]

Yeah, the amount that they're subsidizing the Max/Pro subscribers relative to API pricing is mind blowing having seen both sides of it. The rug pull is going to be epic when they cut subsidies to raise revenues (OpenAI is already moving in that direction in a few days with their top tier going to $500 for the same usage as current $200 Pro)

[u/dksprocket → u/ThadeousCheeks]

The amount of misinformation is crazy for a subreddit that is supposed to be about hard facts.

• API token sales are highly profitable for them (and that's the context we are talking about in these replies to /u/KHRZ)

• Token use for subscriptions are heavily subsidized compared to API costs. This is totally normal for any subscription. Say subscribing to music on iTunes vs. buying all the tracks as singles. Or leasing a car vs. short-term rental.

• Someone maxing out their tokens every week on a private subscription plan is a loss for Anthropic, but again this is pretty normal. The average subscription users are not a loss and they act as a funnel for Claude adaptation in businesses. Again - totally normal business practices.

• The big loss comes from training new models. And they currently don't have enough API users to offset those investments.

So yes, they do operate deeply in the red and the big question is if API revenue will ever get high enough to justify the enormous investments in training and model development. That's still an open question with a ton of unknowns (including the fact that development of new models is now heavily AI-assisted, so there's an accelerating effect). But all the comments about "hurr durr, they lose money on selling tokens" are just completely misinformed.

You can be a bad customer for them and make them lose money on your private subscription. But that is true for a lot of services, and always has been. It has nothing to do with the big gamble Anthropic and OpenAI are doing.

[u/AnAncientBog → u/KHRZ]

They took a loss on that. If they charged you what it cost them, no one would buy it.

[u/BadKittyRawr → u/AnAncientBog]

Well, that doesn't sound like a good business plan at all!

[u/Ocelotofdamage → u/BadKittyRawr]

The business plan is working exactly as intended. The business plan is to sell shares in an IPO at a trillion dollar valuation and laugh all the way to their yachts

[u/BadKittyRawr → u/Ocelotofdamage]

Ahh, that makes a smidge more sense.

[u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco → u/Ocelotofdamage]

I don't think Anthropic, specifically, actually has a business plan anymore. The entirety of the C suite seems to have AI psychosis and are completely convinced they've already solved the singularity.

[u/crxsso_dssreer → u/BadKittyRawr]

the business plan is to get everybody hooked to their subsidized service then a good old rug pull once Anthropic services are so integrated with your IT you have no choice but continue paying them.

Look at Dario laughing at all the suckers vibe coding...

[u/BiDiTi → u/crxsso_dssreer]

The issue is that their revenue is mostly based off of LLM wrappers that are also losing money in an attempt to get everybody hooked to their subsidized service, followed by a good old rug pull…and that money is no longer free.

[u/chambee → u/BadKittyRawr]

It is because the Government will bail them out with more of your money.

[u/DigNitty → u/chambee]

pay me $50,000/year more

Sell $50k “worth” of api tokens

Take $80k loss

Get $69k gov bailout

Charge me $69k (nice) in taxes

Declare bankruptcy

Profit?

[u/Kepabar → u/BadKittyRawr]

On one hand, as people have mentioned, AI companies are all playing chicken with each other using the walmart method. Sell at a loss until your competitors go out of business and then jack up prices after everyone relies on you.

The flip side is that AI companies in America have focused on capabilities over efficiency. Once models become 'competent enough' the engineering focus will shift to efficiency and we'll see those compute costs come down. For anthropic, their 5.5 models are about 40% more efficient than their 5.4 models, for example. So that efficiency work is just starting.

China, as they lack access to high end hardware, started with efficiency instead of capability and their models are much cheaper to run as a result. So the efficiency is possible, its just not been the focus but will become the focus soon.

The bubble will pop, companies will die and prices will sky rocket in a year or two. The big AI companies will survive though because they are backed by companies with alternative revenue streams. Anthropic is backed by Amazon, OpenAI by Microsoft and Grok by the Saudis.. plus Google has their own thing. But all the others without support will get absolutely slaughtered.

[u/hobskhan → u/AnAncientBog]

What kind of estimates do we have of true token costs?

[u/superSmitty9999 → u/AnAncientBog]

Im pretty sure they make money on inference but that it's ballooning training costs and subsidized training plans that drive losses.

[u/linerva → u/KHRZ]

They should have spent 8 billion clearly !

[u/skizzl3 → u/KHRZ]

Bro wtf are you doing to burn that many tokens on just yourself? Do you never clear your context and just run the highest thinking models regardless of need or not?

[u/nunyab1z]

$72B of that $80B is an accounting thing, not actual cash going out the door. They raised money with convertible notes, the company's valuation exploded, so those notes got "more expensive" on paper. They basically got dinged for being worth more lol

The real loss is more like ~$9B over six months, on ~$16B revenue (vs ~$1B a year ago). Still a ton of burn, but not "lost $80B" territory.

If you wanna worry about something, worry about the ~$750B they're planning to spend on compute. That's the actual bet.

[u/greenery_green → u/nunyab1z]

Great insight. Thanks for educating many like me who did not read the article

[u/navigatingbus → u/nunyab1z]

The headline is basically clickbait fodder. Writing down convertible notes because company valuation skyrocketed is standard GAAP weirdness, but committing hundreds of billions to data centers and hardware that depreciate in three to four years is where the real existential risk lives.

[u/0913856742 → u/nunyab1z]

You're the only one here who read the article. This sub should be renamed r/anti_technology.

/EDIT to add: I mean seriously, look at all the top comments and the responses to those comments. Everyone just so eager, so quick to feel smug and signal how much they hate AI without even understanding the deeper point the headline is pointing to. Good riddance.

/EDIT #2: The Reuters article got that $80B figure from this Wall Street Journal piece. I'm going to copy paste the relevant part here:

The company recorded a net loss of $80.7 billion in the six months ending June 30, far more than the $42 billion it lost in all of 2025 and one of the largest half-year losses ever reported.

The vast majority of that loss, $72 billion, resulted from accounting charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments the company issued to raise funding.

So no, not just 'burning money' on tokens as most of the comments elsewhere in this thread would have you think.

/EDIT #3 to add: What is a convertible note?

You want to start a lemonade stand, but you need $100 to buy lemons and cups.

You don't know how much your business is actually worth yet, so you can't sell a piece of the company directly. Instead of selling part of your stand today, a friend gives you $100 as a special loan called a convertible note.

They say "I’m lending you $100 today. Next year, when a big investor comes in and decides what the lemonade stand is worth, my $100 loan will automatically turn into shares of your company."

Because your friend took a risk on you early, you give them a discount (e.g. they get shares for 20% cheaper than the big investor).

Fast forward one year: Your lemonade stand becomes super popular, and everyone wants to invest. The big investor says your stand is now worth $10,000. Because your stand is worth so much more, the special deal you promised your friend is now worth a lot more money to them.

Accounting rules look at this and say: "You promised them a super valuable deal, which means you owe them more value than before." Even though no cash actually left your bank account, accountants force you to write down a loss on paper to show that your promised deal grew in value.

A 'loss' from a convertible note on a financial report is just a paper / non-cash loss, often occurring because the company is doing well enough that a deal promised to early investors became more valuable.

[u/MamaMurpheysGourds → u/0913856742]

Let me help you - try explaining in simplest terms what exactly 'convertible notes and other instruments' means to the unintiated since that seems to be the crux of your comment.

[u/CanvasFanatic]

So they set $80B on fire in six months and the main thing they’ve accomplished is making a lot of software engineers hate their jobs more.

[u/jt121 → u/CanvasFanatic]

And helping prevent new graduates from getting into the field so they could get actual experience, which will come to bite the market in the ass after this shit blows up. Ask me how I know new grads can't find work, btw.

[u/CanvasFanatic → u/jt121]

Oh yeah let’s not forget helping to absolutely wreck the education system.

[u/bollvirtuoso → u/CanvasFanatic]

Guys, you're forgetting the $100 million a fucking day being lit on fire inside of GPUs. Wait until that goes out of the economy.

[u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748 → u/CanvasFanatic]

Don’t worry they are working on the financial industries and medical as well, because these are industries where we need something that can just make up shit.

[u/MegaGorilla69 → u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748]

Mortgage lending won’t touch it. Ancillary stuff sure but underwriting and origination will be a human driven process likely forever. AI is terrible at catching fraud and failed almost every metric we tested it on. Also nobody is willing to be the company who uploaded 50 thousand SSNs to anthropic.

[u/Paddy_Tanninger → u/jt121]

This is by far the worst outcome of this whole thing.

Like legitimately don't know who is ever going to hire a junior again, and I've only been working with Claude/Codex for a week or so now, I'm probably only using 5% of what they can actually do for me...and it's legitimately shocking.

[u/BiDiTi → u/Paddy_Tanninger]

Ahhh, once you’re actually asked to pay something resembling its cost…you’ll hire a junior.

[u/bgibbz084 → u/jt121]

There is zero chance this “blows up” in a way that goes back to our old means of software engineering. I’m sympathetic that you can’t find a job, but the industry has fundamentally and permanently shifted.

[u/Least-Woodpecker-569 → u/bgibbz084]

It’s still shifting - and I have absolutely no idea where and how it ends. Watching it from inside as a software engineer.

[u/BagelsOrDeath → u/Least-Woodpecker-569]

Ditto. At this point on the backside of my career, I was expecting to lean on and be paid based on my expert knowledge and experience. Well, AI has commoditized that. I have no idea where this goes. I'm terrified.

[u/jt121 → u/bgibbz084]

Yep, and that terrifies me because I've spent this money on something I have no experience in and likely won't be able to find a good position in.

[u/Practical-Pumpkin-19 → u/CanvasFanatic]

That's not true. They didn't actually "lose" 80 billion dollars. 72 billion of that 80 is something called a change in fair value of convertible notes.

A convertible note is a way of financing a company, more commonly used in startups. It involves the company taking on debt in exchange for a convertible note, which, can either be paid back for the cash value of the debt plus interest, or, as the name suggests, can be converted for equity.

For example, if I have a lemonade stand worth 100 dollars and I borrow $1 in exchange for 1% of my lemonade stand. The investor's claim to equity is worth $1. Now in a year if my stand is now worth $300, the investor can either ask for his $1 back plus interest, or he can convert that into equity and ask for his 1%. Now since at the time of financing his share was worth $1 and now it is worth $3, it's technically a $2 loss for me (the lemonade stand) even though I didn't actually lose money. The reason this system is common among startups is that it mitigates risk for the investor: if the company does good, they get equity. If it does bad and their equity is worth less than whatever they invested, they get the cash back.

This 80 billion dollar loss is not actually an 80 billion dollar loss. Nowhere close. Their operating loss is only a few hundred million, substantially less than it was last year. And the IRS agrees: change in fair value of convertible notes is not a deductible loss for tax purposes because you didn't actually lose money.

[u/GoCatsTwenty16 → u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

While the technicalities are correct, there is a real “cost” to the company ie. Them giving away however many shares the holders of the notes are entitled to. Which obviously further dilutes the cap table.

Yes theoretically you can make billions of dollars if you get billions of dollars in funding and then give away a large part of your company in the form of non cash comp and convertible instruments. Where exactly is the value to the shareholder? Acting like there is no value leaving the company is also totally misleading.

Again, you may argue that the value of the notes/their liability rises because the company is worth more. Sure, based on what exactly? Increased revenue growth on still shitty margins?

GAAP is ridiculous sometimes, sure. But there’s a reason it exists. These things aren’t just made up numbers, they’re best estimates to display the cost of doing business.

[u/dudeaciously → u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

This makes a lot more sense, thank you. I was thinking Opex vs. Capex is screwed up, but that is moot in relation to this.

[u/s-mores → u/Practical-Pumpkin-19]

OK so that lemonade stand seems amazing, that'll be like $6 million in 10 years. Can I invest?

[u/redmongrel → u/CanvasFanatic]

How much of this is capital I wonder, like the tens of thousands of Nvidia cards?

[u/ReserveFormal3910 → u/redmongrel]

It's a good thing those cards last forever too, right?

[u/DigNitty → u/ReserveFormal3910]

Average lifespan of 5 years lol

[u/CanvasFanatic → u/redmongrel]

Do they even own any data centers themselves? AFAIK they lease all their compute. Some of this could be some sort of structured deals for use or something, but I don’t think they directly buy GPU’s.

[u/MightyKrakyn → u/CanvasFanatic]

> Set $80B on fire

No no no, that’s just net losses. They’ve also burned all of their revenue and maybe capital gains! It’s so much more impressive

[u/Fenderbender805 → u/MightyKrakyn]

Burned their capital gains?

[u/Vandrel → u/Fenderbender805]

You expect people on reddit to know what words mean?

[u/ethan1231 → u/MightyKrakyn]

This may be the most financially retarded comment I've ever read on this site and I was on WSB years before GME

well done

[u/Aint_EZ_bein_AZ → u/MightyKrakyn]

Just spew buzzy financial words and get upvoted. Lmao reddit is so funny

[u/Long_Run6500 → u/CanvasFanatic]

You know how there's always that cliche situation in rpgs where like a bunch of warlocks are like draining the power of the sun to summon in C'Thulu or some shit? That's what these AI companies feel like to me, just racing to summon self improving AGI before the protagonist catches on to their shit, except there's no protagonist to stop them.

[u/Mad_Islander]

My theory is that being in the first top AI companies is not a given that you will come out on top in this AI race. I fear the big player that will become the Apple of AI, has yet to be seen.

They may be the companies pioneering the technology but another will come around and master it.

[u/RuinedbyReading1 → u/Mad_Islander]

This is what the tech bros fear and why they are pushing for government regulations. The brakes are for the new guys, not their own models.

[u/SevereRunOfFate → u/RuinedbyReading1]

I learned this from the great late Clay Christensen when I studied in a class with him once. He basically said "the more I learn about regulators, often the less I like them - because they are so often setup just to protect the incumbents and keep out new entrants (that would disrupt them at a lower cost model)"

[u/Wherethetwigisbent → u/Mad_Islander]

Corps will soon figure out that they don’t actually need a frontier model to meet their business needs, like most people don’t need a ferrari. Open weight models can be run on prem, with some hybrid cloud components, for much less capex and opex than a public token based subscription, while meeting all the needs of the business.

[u/rmczpp → u/Wherethetwigisbent]

I've been looking into this, running the models on your basic work computer probably won't be powerful enough for most jobs, however if the company is willing to purchase a server to run the powerful models on and give all the work computers access, I could see them making a huge saving long term. Because how long can your average business afford $200 per seat per month for?

[u/No-Sandwich2225]

It’s insane how IT companies don’t give a damn about losing millions or billions in the AI era, but would bitch about losing thousands when they had real people as workers.

[u/ComfortablyBalanced → u/No-Sandwich2225]

Eventually they'll come around. It's all a big bubble, it may be the biggest of all and thickest of all but AI as we know it will burst. I'm not saying LLMs and AI has no future but eventually they'll be regulated as hell.

[u/letsgobernie]

And this is with tokenmaxxing, which has died in second half

[u/Chaotic-Entropy → u/letsgobernie]

Well, sure, but they lose money on every token they sell.

[u/yo_les_noobs]

Raise your hand if you only read the headline

[u/porn_sub_lurker]

So the way it's worked in the past is that billionaire investors prop up the hemorrhaging company until the competition is destroyed, at which point the company can raise prices with total market domination and the investors make their money back. But this time the competition is basically any white collar worker, instead of niche industries like taxi or hotel services. I suppose they're also leveraged with other companies right now instead of just investors. So I guess it's just a question of whether or not they run out of money and crash the economy before they take all of our jobs and subjugate us with the police state.

[u/Mike312 → u/porn_sub_lurker]

I think the problem is the competition is another set of billionaire hedge fund investors, as well as some groups (like Intel) playing all sides.

[u/Big_Work_2011 → u/Mike312]

And China. Basically just have to be the only surviving company of its kind in the entire world to have ROI. Sounds good

[u/CorrectionCreator → u/porn_sub_lurker]

Also, the price hike would have to be crazy high. Like too high to be worth it

[u/JJZinna → u/CorrectionCreator]

We will 1000% see cases where more money is spent on tokens than the worker that was replaced.

[u/alwayssunnyinskyrim → u/JJZinna]

We already are, there are already companies trying to hire people back because the AI they replaced them with suddenly skyrocketed in cost

[u/NomadStorm → u/alwayssunnyinskyrim]

It’s not just because of the cost, it’s also because the AI doesn’t actually work well enough to replace people.

[u/DevelopmentSouth8801 → u/porn_sub_lurker]

What companies have had this level of loss before becoming profitable?

I hear this said a lot, especially about Amazon ($3 billion lost over 8 years) and Uber ($30 billion over 10 years), but this is more than double their combined loss in 1/36 of the time.

[u/heekma]

And here it comes.

The bubble is too big with too much debt and prospective investment to explode all at once.

What were're going to see is an adjustment brought on by the reality of promised profitability vs. reality and an increasing number of pokes and punctures deflating the bubble over time.

Data center buildout is faltering and many companies will be exploring training their own personalized ai models with better data over the cost of tokens.

Anthropic delaying their IPO, supposedly that largest ever should tell you something is up.

[u/setokaiba22 → u/heekma]

I keep reading this and yet see no effects on the market that thus is actually going to happen (this AI burst from companies like Open AI or Anthropic - the latter which is especially used so much by workplaces now. I think it’s not going to pop to be honest but can’t understands either side how that occurs

[u/Bad_Finance_Advisor → u/setokaiba22]

The market is irrational. Studies have shown that the AI industry needs to start raking revenue in the trillions, to justify all of the CAPEX. That means AI users have to pay far far more for token usage, at a time when token prices are actually crashing...

[u/gaarai → u/Bad_Finance_Advisor]

And it needs to make trillions when the software industry as a whole generates ~$800b per year globally. And it needs to earn those trillions in the next 2-3 years just to pay off existing debts and obligations. Something has to give since I doubt the world is going to 3-5x their annual software spend on services that promise to cut software spend.

[u/angry_old_dude → u/Bad_Finance_Advisor]

This exactly. The AI companies are borrowing and spending so much money in the hope they'll be profitable enough to pay back those loans.

[u/TheArbiterOfOribos → u/setokaiba22]

You have not closed your parenthesis.

[u/Darkgorge → u/setokaiba22]

You remember how the housing bubble took longer to pop than the insiders thought it would because nobody wanted to admit its true state?

I feel it's like that, only it's a smaller more deeply entrenched set of companies with less oversight (more corruption) and a set of competing international interests all convinced they can't lose to the others.

[u/Servebotfrank → u/Darkgorge]

Yeah you can see that dramatized in the Big Short too. Michael Burry called that the housing market would crash a couple of years before it actually happened and everyone thought he was being a fucking idiot.

Admitting that there's a problem means putting a stop to all of this money coming in, and no one wants to do that.

[u/jeronimoe → u/heekma]

The $80B headline is mostly misleading. 

$72B of it is a non-cash accounting charge: early investors got convertible-style deals, Anthropic's valuation exploded, and the books record what they owe those investors as a "loss." 

No cash left the company, and it goes away when those convert to shares at IPO.

[u/jbokwxguy → u/jeronimoe]

But also they have an average of $45billion per year in non-cancellable commitments for the next 10 years.

[u/swarmy1 → u/heekma]

So, this may be true but the number in the headline isn’t really what people think it is.

Per the article:

The loss, up from $13 billion a year earlier, was driven by $72 billion in accounting charges tied to changes in the value of financial instruments Anthropic issued to raise money, the ​report said

When I looked into it, it seems like Anthropic gave investors basically stock options, and the paper value of those has gone up. Since those are obligations, it counts as a loss in the financials, but it’s not money that Anthropic will have to pay out directly.

In terms of money actually spent, the loss is about $8.7 billion

[u/The_Majestic_]

One of these companies is going to run out of money and when they do they are going to take the economy with it

This feels like a mix of the dot com and housing bubbles on steroids.

The technology is good at at specific things and you need to watch it like a hawk the future will be open source if they dont ban it

[u/sarcasmsosubtle → u/The_Majestic_]

Thanks to the rollback of protections enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, we currently have a housing bubble even bigger than the one that we had in 2008. We also have a subprime auto loan bubble that seems to be popping right now, a student loan bubble that is on the brink of popping, and a credit card debt bubble that is rapidly inflating. Add that to paying higher interest rates on a national debt that has increased by over $21 trillion since Trump was elected in 2016, and we are looking at an economy that is on the verge of complete collapse.

[u/ban-me-harder-dadddy → u/The_Majestic_]

I think they'll be bailed out for "national security" or nationalized and funded by adding another 500B/yr to the federal deficit before being allowed to go under.

[u/Cold_Kick_9156]

Companies can lose 80 billion in a year and still exist, meanwhile people die from hunger and/or homelessness everyday around the world.

How do I not get radicalized in such a world ?

[u/smoothie4564 → u/Cold_Kick_9156]

Companies can lose 80 billion in a year and still exist, meanwhile people die from hunger and/or homelessness everyday around the world.

"Let them eat data centers." - Elon Musk (probably)

[u/dcdem1163 → u/Cold_Kick_9156]

That’s exactly why when I read the headline my immediate thought was “good”

[u/MobilePenguins]

Hmm, seems totally sustainable to me!
I say we continue hedging the entire economy on the wellbeing of this industry. 😊 Business as usual.

[u/ohwhatfollyisman]

why didn't their ai models predict this loss? are they stupid?

[u/kharban → u/ohwhatfollyisman]

You are absolutely right. I went $80 billion dollars over budget - far more than the amount alotted to me.

No more overspending - I will keep that in mind.

[u/MeInSC40]

Their goal is to get companies to embed ai into their day to day operations so they have to use it to operate and then once it’s impractical to get rid of it theyll jack the price up to extortionate levels.

[u/mfukar]

some investors are now weighing a lower valuation of around $1.5 trillion

they have produced nothing and are valuated at over a trillion. absolute lunacy.

[u/Lillian_Crocodilian]

The countdown to government bailouts has begun.

Remember, folks, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong" - George W. Bush, August 2007.

[u/Puzzled-Grass-1207]

No bailouts, don’t care if my 401k is lit on fire

[u/copperblood]

Mmmm that sweet sweet incoming rug pull

[u/AlexKazumi]

Considering the current cost of AI ... Imagine how it will cost once the frontier companies go public and need to make an actual profit and "increase the shareholders' value."

[u/SirOakin]

I hope them a very fast bankruptcy

[u/ThatMisterOrange]

This is why I can't believe these clowns when they keep insisting that they are somehow building an existential threat to humanity, bitch, y'all can't make a single dollar in profit.

[u/drubin]

No big deal yall

[u/Legal-Maize-2784]

Don’t get attached to your pet chatbots, soon we’ll need to splurge to just have some access