2026-10-21 07:13 UTC
The WSJ apparently fucked up describing how Anthropic is actually losing money and now the discourse is very messed up with a lot of people claiming they are actually breaking or even actually making money, basically the AI booster ecosystem is having a huge HA HA GOT EM! The fiinancials were always better than they seemed! moment.
In a new draft prospectus viewed by the Journal, the AI giant disclosed an $80.7 billion net loss for the first half of 2026 and a long list of risk factors
According to my degree in finance from Very Online University the 80 bil net loss of the article’s summary ends up consisting of 72B of convertible notes, which I guess is a type of debt that goes away if the IPO goes well because it converts to equity. Also because it is predicated on equity its nominal value goes up as the projected valuation of the company goes up, so the 72B figure doesn’t even mean that much. Supposedly for Anthro to be on the hook for even a portion of that they would have to IPO at a lower price than expected when this type of debt was originally issued, which probably isn’t happening.
Replies (4)
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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-10-21 08:29
r/BetterOffline post about the article
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@Soyweiser@awful.systems 2026-10-21 09:48
Excellent usage of the chart comic
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@lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 2026-10-21 14:32
There was an annoying booster who said “Ed Zitron is definitely falling for this one”. Ed Zitron is not fooled. In fact, he is frustrated with the report not properly breaking down the expenses (and having a mysterious “other expenses” category).
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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-10-22 00:35
I’m no finances guy so take this with a grain of salt, but since boosters are apparently acting like the convertibles will automatically work out, wouldn’t Anthropic still be losing more than they earn even if all those convertible notes work out due to compute/training costs?