Anthropic Just Became the First Company in History To Reach This Milestone. Here's What It Means for AI Stocks

Ahead of Anthropic's blockbuster IPO expected in November, the company just revealed a big number.

Anthropic brought in $16.8 billion in revenue in the third quarter, up from $11.5 billion in the second quarter. It didn't report revenue in the quarter a year ago, but its year-over-year growth is likely in the 1,000% range.

What's more impressive is that Anthropic isn't even six years old, having been founded in 2021. No other company in history has gotten this big, this fast, as Anthropic has reached run rate revenue of $67 billion in less than six years. The company also said it was profitable on an adjusted basis, sharing this information with investors in a closed meeting ahead of its IPO, according to Financial Times. At that revenue level, the company would already be comfortably in the Fortune 100, or the 100 biggest companies by revenue in the U.S.

The big tech companies that dominate the market today don't even come close to what Anthropic has achieved. Alphabet took roughly 16 years to hit $65 billion in annual revenue, while Meta took about 15 years. Both companies had less than $1 billion in revenue five years after their founding.

Image source: Getty Images.

What it says about Anthropic

Anthropic's success and rapid growth are perhaps the clearest signs yet that the AI boom is real and sustainable. While there's no shortage of predictions that the bubble will burst, Anthropic revenue doesn't come from selling chips or infrastructure, or something that's only indirectly connected to AI.

The lab behind the Claude chatbot and related products like Claude Code is selling the end product that all those Nvidia chips and data centers are for. Its rapid growth and ability to reach $16.8 billion in quarterly revenue this fast show how much demand there is for AI, and bode well for its future growth as the company develops new products and adds new users.

It's also proof that despite critiques about circular financing, bloated valuations, and an eventual slowdown in the AI infrastructure build-out, AI demand is surging, and Anthropic's adjusted profit shows that its growth is sustainable.

What it means for AI stocks

Anthropic is expected to seek a valuation of $2 trillion when it goes public next month, and its third-quarter revenue makes that look reasonable, as it would be trading at roughly 30 times run rate revenue with an adjusted profit. By comparison, that is much cheaper than Space Exploration Technologies was when it went public.

More importantly, it shows that the ecosystem supporting Anthropic, including much of the semiconductor sector, is sustainable, and that the generative AI business model works.

That should help reassure investors that the AI boom has plenty of room to run and is capable of delivering profits to the companies that are selling the end product, like Anthropic.

We're likely to see more stories like Anthropic as AI development evolves and new AI products come out. For example, Wall Street analysts believe Meta's Muse AI personal agent could generate between $27 billion and $36 billion by 2030. Muse just came out last month, so those forecasts should be taken lightly, but the potential for such growth is clearly there, as Anthropic's results indicate.

Above all, Anthropic's accomplishment shows that the boom in AI stocks is justified. There's a company that has smashed revenue growth records, and that couldn't have happened without huge demand for AI. The future remains bright for Anthropic and the rest of the AI sector.

Jeremy Bowman has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.