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points by prolly97 3 days ago | 0 comments

Adding a zero to revenue every year is wild. Regardless of whether you like Anthropic.

[–] 34679 3 days ago

That's not so hard when you're also adding zeros to the funding.

[–] JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> not so hard when you're also adding zeros to the funding

Plenty of counter-examples, including the entire dot-com era.

[–] 34679 3 days ago

If revenue growth was all that mattered, you could just sell investor dollars for $0.50.

[–] trollbridge 3 days ago

99¢-Theranos style is better. Takes a lot longer for investors to notice.

[–] jacquesm 3 days ago

If you think that's the bar: it's been done, many times over. The unit-cost-profitability test was ignored by many VCs (they learned something and if they had deep enough pockets they got to play again).

[–] JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> If revenue growth was all that mattered

Straw man. Nobody argued this. What was falsely stated at the start was turning investor dollars into revenue is easy.

I specifically went into unit economics elsewhere [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50243393

[–] Zigurd 3 days ago

Cisco is definitely not a counter example. They survived, but they could be a template for what will happen to OpenAI and/or Anthropic.

[–] brainwad 3 days ago

14x YoY revenue growth, with 3x lower operating losses (total, not per unit). They don't need to add any zeros to the funding and seem like they might even be operating at a profit soon...

[–] boringg 3 days ago

WHAT? Not so hard? Clearly written by someone who comments from the sidelines.

Growth at that scale is hard. I don't care if you don't like the company - it still hard.

[–] menshiki 3 days ago

Yes, it is

[–] ivanjermakov 3 days ago

It will be even more wild when investors will notice growth slowing down.

[–] jfckenfishf 3 days ago

Isn't the rate of growth already flattening? Most companies are already cracking down on excessive token spend and setting up pretty low limits.

And some of the big spenders have their own models.

[–] internetter 3 days ago

2.2% of U.S. HOUSEHOLDS are subscribed to AI

[–] JDups 3 days ago

What's the token spend ratio between a household vs a software developer? If the future customer growth comes from regular households I don't think very much of them will spend nearly as much.

[–] elixirnogood 3 days ago

do we know how much are they paying on average? I just got Gemini Plus that seems sufficient for my family's ordinary usage and it's $37 per year (3 bucks / month). I just don't see the AI companies making any serious money with this type of pricing.

[–] bko 3 days ago

The S-1 is already out of date. Q3 revenue is $16.8b compared to $11.6b in Q2 (reflected in the S1).

I get why revenue blew up from say from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026, but this was surprising. 45% QoQ growth. When does it stop?

[–] kurthr 3 days ago

Wait, it fell from 140% growth to 45% growth and that's a good thing? If they fall to 15% growth in Q4, will that be even better? Where are we supposed to be on the adoption curve?

[–] throwa356262 3 days ago

IMO we are already at the enshitfication stage.

Anthropic increased short term profits by jacking up their prices for enterprise accounts - by starting charging API prices instead of plan prices. It is possible we soon see customers fleeing Anthropic once they find a good alternative

[–] datadrivenangel 3 days ago

Yeah, everyone I know paying enterprise prices is really looking at them wondering if it's worth it. Most of them think it is, but they're also looking at alternatives...

[–] nemonemo 3 days ago

It does not seem as bad as it sounds like. The numbers are quarter-by-quarter and the market is fluctuating day-by-day basis. To me, growing in this fierce market by 45% qoq seems amazing by itself.

[–] jacquesm 3 days ago

> When does it stop?

Roughly a week after Dario has rung the bell. Note that the growth in absolute sense hasn't peaked yet but the curve itself is already flattening and everybody with some sense for stock prices will read that as a very relevant signal.

The party that wins here is NV, Anthropic, not so much. But that's good then Dario and his sister can go back to improving the world. Let's hope they take Altman with them.

[–] baq 3 days ago

Now, hence IPO.

[–] weieq2211 3 days ago

Correct.

You buying at the inflated price I take? Much of your posts are pro AI - yes this is a test

[–] baq 3 days ago

Yes, I'm buying. Alphabet.

[–] Noaidi 3 days ago

Not so wild when you add two zeros to hardware-related liabilities...