The full story
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, filed to go public on 26 Oct. Its loss for Jan–Jun 2026: $80.7B. Here is why most of it was never spent
Think of a pizza shop. A friend lends you $6 and says: pay me back with a slice of the shop. The shop gets famous, and that slice is now worth $108. The rules make you write down a $102 loss. You spent nothing; your friend just owns a pricier slice.
Claude's version: • $72.4B: Amazon lent $6.2B, to be paid back in shares. Claude's value shot up, so those shares are now worth $108.6B, and the rise is booked as a loss. (Google had loans like this too; they turned into shares during the half.) Anthropic pays this back in shares, not cash. Only if Amazon's 12% ownership cap stops some notes converting before they mature is the rest repaid in cash, and then it's the $6.2B lent plus interest, not $108.6B. • $8.8B: mostly deals to sell Google and Amazon more shares at an old, cheaper price, booked the same way. • $0.7B: money actually lost running Claude: $16.3B earned, $17.0B spent. • Interest earned on cash (+$1.1B) brings the total to $80.7B.
The turn: Apr–Jun alone, the business made a $1.0B operating profit on $11.6B of sales. But the big computing bills (Broadcom, SpaceX, the clouds) mostly start from late 2026, so costs are about to jump.
Caveat: a bigger slice for Amazon and Google means a smaller slice for every other owner. And the half-year figures are unaudited.
