According to Woofun AI, Anthropic officially submitted its S-1 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, planning to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol ANT. Although the offering price range has not yet been disclosed, market discussions about its valuation have surged to a range of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. The public release of this document not only marks a milestone for this AI giant as it moves toward the capital markets, but also, through detailed financial data and business logic, thoroughly reveals the underlying truth of its business model: beneath the surface of what appears to be a consumer-facing application, Anthropic is in fact a company extremely focused on the enterprise market, a true B2B operation. The role of individual users in its strategic map is not as a core revenue source, but as key "fuel" serving enterprise customer acquisition.
From a financial performance perspective, Anthropic finds itself at a critical juncture of explosive growth and a profitability turning point. In the first half of 2026, the company's revenue reached $16.286 billion, representing a leapfrog increase compared to $1.163 billion in the same period of 2025. More notably, in the second quarter, Anthropic posted an operating profit of $974 million, marking the first operating profitable quarter in the company's history. However, a net loss of $80.7 billion on the books did not obscure the improvement in its profitability, with the bulk of $72.388 billion stemming from fair value changes in convertible bonds, derivative liabilities, and SAFEs, which are non-cash accounting expenses. This financial structure clearly indicates that the company's core business cash-generating capability has already taken shape, and its growth momentum is strong.
A deeper analysis of the revenue structure makes the marginalized position of individual users immediately apparent. For the full year of 2025, usage-based revenue was $3.796 billion, while subscription revenue was only $789 million, a ratio of roughly 83% to 17%. By the first half of 2026, usage-based revenue soared to $13.064 billion, with subscription revenue at $3.222 billion, with the former still holding about an 80% share and subscription revenue accounting for only about 20%. It is worth noting that this 20% of subscription revenue includes individual users' Claude Pro and Claude Max, as well as enterprise-grade Team and Enterprise plans. Since the prospectus does not break out individual subscriptions separately, this means that the real money contributed by individual users as a share of total revenue is certainly less than 20%, and possibly even lower. This stark proportional disparity directly reflects the degree to which the company tilts its resources toward different user groups.
Dependence on cloud vendor channels and the expansion of its customer base constitute the two major pillars of Anthropic's revenue growth. The share of revenue from sales to customers through cloud vendor marketplaces such as Amazon (AMZN.US), Google (GOOGL.US), and Microsoft (MSFT.US) has been climbing steadily: about 11% in 2023, about 32% in 2024, about 47% in 2025, and about 48% in the first half of 2026. Nearly half is supported by the distribution pipelines of the three cloud giants. At the same time, the number of institutional customers has expanded rapidly. As of September 30, 2026, customers contributing more than $100,000 in revenue over the past 12 months (counted as independent organizations) surged from more than 950 a year earlier to more than 11,900. The customer structure is healthy, with no single customer accounting for more than 10% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026, and the top five customers combined accounting for about 25%. This diversified and high-growth customer base provides a solid foundation for the company's continued expansion.
In defining its core metrics, Anthropic further excludes the influence of individual users. The prospectus defines paying individual users as "prosumers," that is, individuals who subscribe to AI tools to engage in knowledge work, such as researchers and developers. However, the entire 300-plus-page prospectus does not disclose daily active or monthly active user numbers, nor does it even mention the number of paid subscribers. What best reflects this attitude is the net revenue retention rate. As of September 30, 2026, Anthropic's net revenue retention rate was as high as approximately 900%, but in calculating this metric, individual subscribers of Claude Pro and Claude Max were excluded on the grounds that fixed-price subscriptions cannot reflect expansion and contraction behavior. When a company does not display user activity and excludes individual subscribers from its core retention calculation, the weight of ordinary individual users in its mind speaks for itself.
The core driver of enterprise-side monetization lies in Claude Code and the efficient allocation of computing power. The prospectus notes that Claude Code defines the form of autonomous AI work, and agents capable of writing code, running tests, and fixing bugs on their own consume enormous amounts of computing power. In the third quarter of 2026, Claude Enterprise users who did not use Claude Code spent less than $75 per month on average, while the top 5% of users spent about 20 times that amount. This kind of high-value customer has supported the company's miraculous per-employee efficiency: as of September 30, 2026, the company had approximately 5,300 employees, with revenue per employee exceeding $6.6 million over the past 12 months, compared to only $1.4 million a year earlier. Data compiled by Woofun AI shows that sales and marketing expenses in the first half of 2026 were $3.808 billion, which included computing power and infrastructure costs provided for free access, meaning that free users are treated on the books as customer acquisition costs.
Individual users play the role of a "spark" strategically, aimed at penetrating the enterprise market through word of mouth. The prospectus reviews the growth flywheel: the diffusion of Claude has largely been spontaneous, driven by software developers and professional individual users. These people first use Claude on a personal level, then push for broader adoption within their organizations, thereby saving the trouble of building a massive direct sales team. Software developers are the core group; they understand how systems work, have credibility in evaluating technical tools, and often drive internal adoption of new technologies. Winning their trust is the foundation for Claude's broad diffusion among enterprise employees. However, this model has a soft spot: the prospectus warns that competitors with stronger consumer businesses could seize the "starting point for enterprise adoption," namely individual users, through consumer applications, thereby adversely affecting the company's business.
Anthropic needs individual users as word-of-mouth advocates and promoters, but its core resources are organized around enterprise scenarios. This awkward situation means that when computing power is constrained and large enterprise orders flood in, individual users are the first to be limited. In summary, Anthropic is essentially a B2B company draped in consumer-grade clothing. Its research priorities, product roadmap, and marketing team are all organized around enterprise use cases, and its real business is selling usage-based computing power and autonomous working agents to tens of thousands of enterprises. When a company with a valuation approaching $2 trillion places all its chips on enterprise workflows and code agents, the position of individual users will only become increasingly marginal. In the future, if more developers turn to competitors due to poor experiences, whether Anthropic can hold onto the starting point for enterprise adoption that it prides itself on will be the biggest dual geopolitical and market challenge facing its long-term growth.
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