Anthropic roadshow targets 35% long-term operating profit; founders plan to cash out $1.75 billion in IPO; Goldman Sachs estimates $685 billion revenue by 2030

In the IPO roadshow video released on Tuesday, June 10th Eastern Time, Anthropic disclosed its long-term profitability target: the company believes that as compute efficiency improves, the proportion of direct procurement and leasing of compute power increases, and the share of inference business expands, the long-term adjusted operating profit margin is expected to reach over 35%, more than 20 percentage points higher than the 15% achieved in Q3 this year.

Earlier on Tuesday, Anthropic filed an updated prospectus with the U.S. SEC showing that its seven co-founders plan to sell a total of about $1.75 billion in shares in the IPO; Goldman Sachs analysts predict that Anthropic’s annual revenue could reach $685 billion by 2030.

This means that Anthropic is trying to demonstrate to investors during the IPO roadshow a path from high-speed growth to high profitability. However, the company did not provide a clear timetable for achieving the above-35% long-term target; Goldman's revenue forecast is also far above Anthropic’s current operational scale, and whether it can be fulfilled in the future still depends on enterprise client growth, control of compute costs, and the progress of AI commercialization.

Compute Expenditure Ratio Target Lowered to 45%-50%, Sales and Personnel Costs Also to Be Reduced

According to reports, Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao stated in the IPO roadshow video that the company believes it can achieve an adjusted operating profit margin of 35% or higher in the long term, with this figure at 15% in Q3 2026.

To achieve this goal, Anthropic expects that with the continued improvement in compute efficiency, the increasing proportion of Anthropic Direct compute supply, and more compute resources being allocated to inference business, the compute and infrastructure expenditure as a share of revenue will gradually drop to around 45%-50%. This was 58% in the third quarter.

Anthropic Direct is a model where the company directly leases AI chips and data centers, rather than fully relying on cloud service providers for compute power. By directly acquiring and managing compute resources, the company hopes to improve supply chain control and reduce long-term compute costs.

Other expenses are also included in the long-term optimization target. The roadshow video shows that sales, marketing, and partner expenses are expected to drop to 7%-10% of revenue, from 14% in Q3; adjusted personnel and other operating expenses are expected to fall to 7%-10% from about 13% in Q3.

From this long-term cost structure, Anthropic hopes to control compute and infrastructure expenditures to about half its revenue, while further compressing the relative share of sales, marketing, personnel, and other operating expenses to drive the overall adjusted operating profit margin toward above 35%.

Adjusted Profitability Still Fluctuates, Third Quarter GAAP Still at a Loss

According to Anthropic’s prospectus, revenue for the third quarter of 2026 reached $16.956 billion, a substantial increase from $1.382 billion in the same period last year; adjusted operating profit was $2.463 billion, corresponding to an adjusted operating margin of 15%, down from 19% in the second quarter.

However, under GAAP accounting, Anthropic still recorded an operating loss of $567 million in the third quarter, in stark contrast to a $974 million operating profit in Q2. The company explained that Q3 performance was affected by about $5 billion in short-term compute procurement costs, and about $2 billion in non-cash charitable donation matching program expenses.

Adjusted operating profit margin and GAAP operating margin are not the same indicator. In its prospectus, Anthropic defines adjusted operating profit as operating profit excluding stock-based compensation, non-cash charitable donations, and Bartz litigation settlement costs; adjusted operating margin is adjusted operating profit divided by revenue. Investors need to note that this non-GAAP metric excludes some costs actually included in the financial statements and cannot be equated directly to the company’s profit level under GAAP standards.

Over a longer period, in the first nine months of 2026, Anthropic achieved $33.242 billion in revenue, with a GAAP operating loss of $1.26 billion, but adjusted operating profit of $4.081 billion, corresponding to an adjusted operating margin of about 12%. In the same period last year, the company had an adjusted operating loss of $3.133 billion.

This shows Anthropic’s adjusted operating performance has improved significantly, but still exhibits quarter-to-quarter fluctuations. The company also cautioned in the prospectus that new compute investment typically precedes the realization of associated revenue, and as large-scale compute comes online in the future, its operating profit margin and adjusted operating profit margin might still come under pressure periodically.

Founding Team Will Retain Large Holdings, Sale Accounts for 2.9% of IPO Issuance

Aside from profitability targets, the stock sale arrangement by Anthropic’s founding team has also become a highlight of this IPO prospectus.

According to the prospectus updated on November 10, all seven Anthropic co-founders plan to sell 3.3784 million shares each. At the mid-point issue price of $74 per share, that’s about $250 million in cash-out for each, or $1.75 billion in total for all seven.

The seven founders include CEO Dario Amodei, President and Chairman Daniela Amodei, as well as Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, and Christopher Olah.

Despite the billion-dollar scale of the sale, based on the mid-point of the issue price, each founder will still retain approximately $18 billion worth of shares. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates, IPO pricing could result in each founder’s personal wealth reaching about $18 billion.

This is not the first time founders have sold shares. The prospectus shows Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei previously participated in tender offer transactions in June 2025 and April 2026. The shares sold by the seven people in this IPO constitute about 2.9% of the total shares offered in this public offering, and the company itself will not benefit from these secondary market sales.

Enterprise Customers to Be Main Growth Driver; Revenue Forecast Implies Rapid Rise

As Anthropic seeks a trillion-dollar IPO valuation, Goldman Sachs analysts have offered an even more aggressive long-term growth forecast.

According to reports, Goldman Sachs’ research team predicts Anthropic’s annual revenue will reach about $685 billion by 2030, nearly 150 times the company’s projected 2025 revenue of $4.59 billion. Of this, enterprise clients are expected to contribute about $586 billion annually, with non-enterprise customer revenue around $100 billion.

This forecast highlights the importance of the enterprise market in Anthropic’s long-term growth prospects. As Claude is increasingly applied in software development, knowledge work, and enterprise automation, Goldman expects enterprise customers will become the main source of the company’s future revenue growth.

Goldman also forecasts Anthropic’s revenue will grow from roughly $4.6 billion in 2025 to about $52 billion in 2026, $136 billion in 2027, and top $600 billion by 2030. Goldman expects the company’s spending on compute will continue rising sharply, with free cash flow potentially only turning positive by 2030.

It is worth noting that Goldman’s $685 billion forecast is based on analyst modeling and is not a performance commitment from Anthropic to investors. Whether such a large revenue increase can be achieved still depends on enterprise clients’ sustained willingness to pay for AI services, the speed at which inference costs decline, and whether Anthropic can maintain pricing power amid intensifying competition.

IPO Could Raise up to $64.4 Billion, Plus $26 Billion in Private Placement

Anthropic’s IPO plans to offer 825 million Class A common shares, with the company issuing about 801.4 million shares and existing shareholders selling about 23.65 million shares. The offering price range is $70-78 per share. At the upper end, the IPO could raise up to $64.4 billion.

In addition, the company arranged a concurrent private placement totaling $26 billion, with subscribers including AMD, Broadcom, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Micron, and TSMC. Combining IPO and private placement, total fundraising could reach up to $90.4 billion.

Depending on the public shares issued and related equity, media estimates of the company’s valuation vary: Reuters, based on shares outstanding disclosed in the prospectus, estimates a maximum valuation of about $1.02 trillion; Bloomberg’s approximately $1.4 trillion valuation includes broader potential equity dilution factors. The two are not fully comparable valuation approaches.

For investors, Anthropic’s roadshow is not only about promoting its rapid revenue growth and model competitiveness, but also about explaining how the company will transition from large-scale compute investment to sustained profitability. The long-term adjusted operating margin target above 35%, Goldman’s $685 billion revenue forecast for 2030, and the founders’ sale of $1.75 billion in shares together constitute the main highlights of this mega IPO.

However, despite high growth expectations, whether compute investments can translate into sufficient revenue and profit remains a core issue that cannot be ignored when assessing Anthropic’s long-term value.