Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has seen its valuation skyrocket to a staggering $100 billion, nearly doubling from $58 billion just four months ago. This remarkable growth can be attributed to the impressive financial data disclosed to select investors, which revealed a fourfold increase in annualized revenue in the first half of 2023, surpassing the $4 billion mark.
To capitalize on this momentum, Anthropic secured $3.5 billion in equity funding in March and aims to raise a total of $5.5 billion by the end of the year. Despite the challenges of substantial investments in the AI industry, Anthropic has demonstrated strong commercial capabilities, attracting the attention of numerous investors, particularly in high-profit sectors such as AI programming.
Anthropic's financial situation is complex. The company generates approximately 60% gross margin by directly selling its AI models and the Claude chatbot to customers, with the potential to increase to 70% in the future. However, its sales through Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have a negative 30% gross margin. As of the end of 2023, 70% of Anthropic's revenue comes from direct sales, with an overall gross margin ranging between 50% and 55%, showing no significant improvement.
One of the successful applications of large language models, automated programming tasks have brought substantial revenue to Anthropic. Its coding assistant, Claude Code, has seen a sixfold increase in downloads per week since its full launch in May, reaching 3 million downloads to date. This has become a significant source of income for the company, contributing over $200 million in annualized revenue. Moreover, Anthropic's rapid growth has indirectly spurred the development of other startups, such as rival Cursor, whose annual revenue has increased tenfold since last November.
In terms of cash consumption, Anthropic faces similar challenges as OpenAI. The company is expected to consume $3 billion in cash this year, compared to OpenAI's $6.8 billion. Although OpenAI's revenue is several times that of Anthropic, its cash consumption is relatively lower. Overall, both companies have demonstrated astonishing revenue growth, filling investors with optimism about their future prospects and the likelihood of surpassing their initial targets for the year.