Anthropic Lost $80.7 Billion — And Investors Are Set to Shrug It Off

By Daniel Okafor

Anthropic reported an $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of 2026. The same filing shows revenue up 13x, from $1.3 billion to $16.3 billion year over year. Investors will likely forgive the loss, because almost all of it is accounting, not cash, Fortune's Shawn Tully reports.

The company filed its S-1 this week. The prospectus lays out quarterly numbers starting on page 157. Fortune's assessment of the bedrock financial performance: surprisingly excellent.

What is actually inside the $80.7 billion hole?

The loss comes mostly from changes in the fair value of convertible notes and other non-cash charges. Strip those out, and the picture changes. Anthropic's quarterly revenue is growing and keeping pace with operating expenses. GAAP net income still shows steep losses that widen over time. But the adjusted line tells a different story: the company posted $1.6 billion in adjusted operating income for the first six months of 2026. That is a margin above 9%.

How big is the compute bill?

Anthropic plans to spend up to $567 billion on compute, Emily Forlini reports. The prospectus also reveals plans to build its own data centers. Sebastian Herrera and Jeremy Kahn note the filing makes clear Anthropic is on the hook for billions in compute — while its customers can walk at any time.

Other details from the filing:

• The seven cofounders are splitting roughly $200 billion almost evenly, down to the last stock option, Amanda Gerut reports. Each is already worth about $14 billion, a figure that could double in an IPO, according to Nick Lichtenberg.
• The founders have pledged to give away most of their stakes — an 80% giving pledge worth nearly $80 billion, Tatiana Sataua reports.
• The dual-class share structure borrows ideas from Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and the New York Times, Lichtenberg writes.
• Risk factors include the end of humanity, a feud with the Pentagon and CEO Dario Amodei's reputation, Beatrice Nolan reports.

The filing calmed markets. Tech stocks rose on the appearance of the prospectus, easing fears that frontier labs and their ecosystem could not operate sustainably.

What did Apollo say about AI's payoff?

Apollo Global Management's Torsten Sløk delivered a blunt verdict. "Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech," he wrote in a recent blog.

His evidence is simple. "Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but is flat for the S&P 493," Sløk wrote. "Profit margins are rising for the Mag 7 but are flat for the S&P 493." Productivity shows the same split.

Pantheon Macroeconomics' Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen offer two macro explanations. Corporate AI investment is crowding out investment elsewhere in the economy. And much of the capex goes to imported foreign technology, so that cash leaves the country and drags on GDP growth. Goldman, separately, says AI's boost to the U.S. economy is nearing its peak.

What moved the markets?

Stocks were mixed globally. Brent crude hit $117 per barrel over the last 24 hours and settled just under $116. Europe, heavily dependent on energy imports, declined in early trading. The Stoxx 600 fell 0.18%; the U.K.'s FTSE 100 lost 0.77%.

Asia had a strong day. South Korea's KOSPI rose 3.09%. Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 1.73%. India's Nifty 50 edged up 0.08%. China's CSI 300 fell 1.32%.

In the U.S., S&P 500 futures rose 0.07% after the index gained 0.7% yesterday. Meta was the exception among tech stocks: its shares fell nearly 2% after it announced $95 billion in new dilutive stock to fund its AI buildout. Bitcoin declined to $79,585.

What else matters today?

Pantheon Macroeconomics data shows an increasing share of U.S. consumers — especially low earners — more than 90 days delinquent on credit cards, auto loans and home equity debts.

AbbVie advertised five vacancies in information security and risk management. Sixty percent of the applicants turned out to be fake or fraudulent. "For a company that receives more than 1.2 million applications annually and hires roughly 12,000 people, that percentage was unacceptable," a spokesperson for Phenom, an AI-driven HR company that counts AbbVie as a client, told Fortune. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four applicants will be fake.

And Canada's strategic maple syrup reserve is nearly exhausted. The Quebec reserve — three warehouses holding about 218,000 barrels — will be empty by February, the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers predicts. Americans rushed to buy Canadian syrup ahead of Trump's tariffs, pushing export growth to nearly 16%, up from 9% in 2024.

The S-1's real test comes next: whether Anthropic can keep revenue growth ahead of a $567 billion compute bill, quarter after quarter.