SAN FRANCISCO, California: Anthropic recorded a net loss of US$80.7 billion in the first six months of 2026 as a massive accounting charge and sharply higher spending on computing and infrastructure weighed on the AI startup ahead of its planned initial public offering.

The loss widened from $13 billion a year earlier, according to a draft IPO prospectus Reuters reviewed. It included a $72 billion accounting charge reflecting an increase in the estimated value of bonds that could eventually convert into Anthropic shares, rather than cash costs tied to its operations.

The San Francisco-based company is expected to go public in November, with some investors considering a lower valuation of around $1.5 trillion following its latest financial disclosures, Reuters reported last week.

The figures highlight the enormous costs of the AI race as investors increasingly scrutinize whether the vast sums invested in chips and data centers will generate sufficient returns.

Anthropic has committed to spending at least $518 billion over a decade on cloud services, computing and infrastructure.

The company spent nearly $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure in the first half of 2026, up from $2.3 billion a year earlier, according to the S-1 document.

Anthropic did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

At an investor meeting on October 14, Anthropic told prospective IPO investors that third-quarter revenue jumped 45 percent from the previous quarter to $16.8 billion, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

While the figures eased some concerns about the enormous costs of developing AI systems, some investors were disappointed by the slowing sequential growth rate. Revenue had more than doubled from the first quarter to $11.6 billion in the second quarter.

A cooler reception for Anthropic's IPO could weigh on the wider AI market, whose near-term prospects investors see as hinging largely on the share sale's success, ahead of rival OpenAI's potential listing next year.

Reuters reported in September that Anthropic posted a $42 billion net loss in 2025, most of it from a similar accounting charge. As Anthropic's valuation climbed, the estimated fair value of those notes tripled year over year.

Excluding the charge, Anthropic posted an operating loss of about $8.1 billion on $4.6 billion of revenue in 2025.

The company has benefited from the popularity of Claude Code, its coding assistant that developers use to write software and build apps.