Summary

Bottom-up Tokenomics build of Anthropic's confidential-IPO financials: >$1B quarterly profit, ~$100B combined ARR with OpenAI, B2B monetization leadership and pricing power — argued as the reason Anthropic IPOs first and forces OpenAI to open its books to fund the buildout.

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Introduction

When Dario Amodei left OpenAI to start Anthropic in early 2021, the viral release of ChatGPT was over 18 months away and the commercialization of LLMs was practically zero. Just a few short years later, Anthropic and OpenAI combine for ~$100B of ARR and a clear winner emerged in the profitable monetization of AI models in 2026 as Claude Code took the software development world by storm.

Anthropic confidentially filed for IPO on June 1st. Over 1 month later, equity raises from hyperscalers loom, and a reported OpenAI push out of their own IPO until 2027 has led some to question the ability of the labs to raise. However, Anthropic is the clear clubhouse leader in capturing the B2B market today and is doing so in a profitable manner against an unfocused and money-burning competitor.

With this lead, we expect Anthropic to take advantage of their superior business model and margins to invest in further in new models that help extend their lead and monetization over closed and open source competitors. Anthropic has the ability to truly make OpenAI dance and we see Anthropic as the first $6T company as a base-case possibility if they continue to execute. Pricing power, gross margins, business model, and profitability are all reasons for Anthropic to IPO first and put the impetus on OpenAI to open their financials and raise the necessary capital to compete and fund the massive AI buildout still to come.

We’ve already seen 2 AI Labs IPO this year (Zhipu and Minimax from China), but Anthropic would be the first AI lab of this scale to do so. A confidential filing means there are no public numbers disclosed. Fortunately, the Tokenomics team at SemiAnalysis works to build the financials from the bottom-up by SKU, tier, and customer type. Recently, a WSJ article on Anthropic’s financials confirmed the accuracy of the work our Tokenomics team does across labs and hyperscalers to help investors, corporates, and other stakeholders understand the economics and financials of the AI Ecosystem.

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Source: WSJ, SemiAnalysis Tokenomics Model

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the work our team has done in the Tokenomics Model and walk you through the financial details of Anthropic, how that compares to OpenAI, where we see the market moving, and implications for the value chain and broader AI market. While other SemiAnalysis work focuses on the technical aspects of AI Labs, this piece will focus solely on the current and future financials, margin economics, and long-term outlook for Anthropic.

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