Anthropic is about to overtake OpenAI on two fronts at once: valuation and profitability. The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic told investors it expects to deliver its first operating profit in the second quarter of 2026, with revenue more than doubling to about $10.9 billion from $4.8 billion in Q1. CNBC confirmed the figures. The company projects roughly $559 million in operating profit for the period.
The milestone would mark a sharp reversal from last summer, when Anthropic told investors it did not expect a full-year profit until at least 2028. The operating profit figure includes model training costs but excludes stock-based compensation, according to PYMNTS, which reviewed the WSJ report. The profitability news lands alongside a funding round that could value Anthropic at more than $900 billion, surpassing OpenAI's $852 billion valuation from March.
Bloomberg first reported the talks, and TechCrunch later confirmed that Anthropic asked investors to submit allocations within 48 hours for what is expected to be roughly $50 billion in new capital. The company raised its last round in February at $380 billion. The primary growth driver is enterprise adoption of Claude Code, Anthropic's coding assistant. Reuters reported that Bristol Myers Squibb is making Claude available to more than 30,000 employees for drug discovery, while TechCrunch noted that Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI among verified business customers on Ramp's spending data.
CEO Dario Amodei acknowledged the pace at a developer conference earlier this month, saying revenue growth had become "too hard to handle," according to PYMNTS.
Compute efficiency is improving alongside revenue growth. In the first quarter, Anthropic spent 71 cents on compute for every dollar of revenue. That ratio is expected to fall to 56 cents in the current quarter, per the WSJ report cited by PYMNTS. The company relies primarily on chips from Google and Amazon rather than Nvidia, and has made more conservative data-center commitments than OpenAI.
Anthropic cautioned that it may not sustain profitability for the full year due to planned compute spending increases. The company struck a deal this month with Amazon for up to $25 billion in investment and 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, while Google plans to invest up to $40 billion. The company also secured 5 gigawatts of compute from Google and Broadcom starting next year. The financials were shared with investors as part of the ongoing funding round that is expected to be Anthropic's last private raise before a potential IPO as early as October, cited by TechCrunch. The news broke the same day reports emerged that OpenAI could soon file for its own IPO, setting up a public market showdown between the two rivals.
