In a recent legal filing, Anthropic said that its revenue "exceed[ed] $5 billion to date." @edzitron says other Anthropic statements indicate it was more than $6 billion and that "these two statements do not match up." But, um, $6 billion exceeds $5 billion?
My guess is that Anthropic releases audited financial statements once a month or once a quarter or something, and the lawyers used the last official number, which was a few weeks out of date.
Also, check out this train wreck of a spreadsheet Ed made to estimate Anthropic's revenue for 2025. He doesn't count February 1-10, counts March 1-10 twice, counts August 21-October 21 as one month instead of two, and doesn't count October 21-November 1.
Ed claims he tried to compute Anthropic's revenue for 2025 and came up with $3.6 billion, suggesting some funny business. I made a new spreadsheet where I used his numbers but fixed the obvious errors (like treating August 21-October 21 as one month), and I got $4.3 billion.
If you change the August number to $500 billion (the average of Ed's numbers of July and September), then Anthropic's 2025 revenue is $4.5 billion, which is right in line with media reports.
BTW a source told Reuters that "the $5 billion figure refers to GAAP revenue generated from 2023 through to December 2025." Probably the lawyers gave the latest quarterly figure rather than trying to give an up-to-the-minute number. reuters.com/commentary/bre…
Anyway I mostly try to ignore Ed Zitron but people keep sending me his stuff. I wish more people understood how ignorant, innumerate, and sloppy he is.
We had a private email conversation last week where I pointed out some of the problems with his spreadsheet. He never responded, which makes me wonder if he actually cares about getting these details right.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.