Anthropic's "Profitability" Swindle
Key takeaways
- Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about how Anthropic is “about to have its first profitable quarter,” specifically an operating profit, or EBITDA profitability:
- That’s a lot of certainty considering we’re barely through the first half of the second quarter, and quite a specific number given the fact that June hasn’t started!
- Because based on this unhelpfully-labeled diagram from the Journal, it appears (as I said last year) that its costs scale linearly with its revenues, except they…magically didn’t in the second quarter?
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about how Anthropic is “about to have its first profitable quarter,” specifically an operating profit, or EBITDA profitability:
Interesting! That’s a lot of certainty considering we’re barely through the first half of the second quarter, and quite a specific number given the fact that June hasn’t started! And all of these numbers are mysteriously leaking exactly while it raises its funding round!
Oh there’s also one important note: The Journal adds at the bottom of the article that “...it is unclear what accounting methods Anthropic has used to book revenue and costs, as the company isn’t yet required to follow the financial-reporting requirements of a public company.” That’s right —-- Anthropic is possibly going to be EBITDA profitable for a single quarter, on a non-GAAP basis.