Anthropic Made a Lot More Money — and Its Boss Says Slow Down AI
Anthropic says its everyday business was profitable last quarter and should stay profitable this quarter, the Financial Times reported on Sept. 13.
The profit figure is adjusted, which means some extra costs are left out of the math. Second-quarter revenue was $11.5 billion, 14 times higher than a year earlier, the Financial Times reported.
On Saturday, Sept. 12, Chief Executive Dario Amodei publicly called for a slowdown in artificial intelligence in a lengthy essay. Politico reported the essay, while Reuters reported that Amodei urged AI companies to slow model development.
Anthropic introduced Claude Opus 5 on July 24. The company described it as a big step up for the Opus version that powers long-running helpers that can do coding and office work over time. Its later listings include "Our position on open-weights models" on July 27 and "Investigating three real-world incidents in our cybersecurity evaluations" on July 30. Anthropic
In August, Anthropic announced that Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar will join as Chief Global Affairs Officer on Aug. 4. Its listings for the month also include "How Claude's text watermark works" on Aug. 14, "Funding better evaluations of AI's impact on wellbeing" on Aug. 25 and "Expanding our support for scientists" on Aug. 27. Anthropic
On Sept. 1, the company listed "Developing Enterprise Frontier Safeguards with our customers." It also said it is opening a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard, a shared set of rules to help AI helpers safely run physical machines, to scientific research labs and advanced manufacturers. Anthropic
The broader context here is simple. Selling a lot more can help pay high running costs, like more diners helping a restaurant cover rent. But adjusted profit is not the full bill. Left-out costs still affect cash and risk.
In my view, the order of events will get attention. The update pointing to continued profit was reported one day after the boss called for slowing down AI work. That puts the focus on how Anthropic spends, what it charges companies, and who pays for safety work.
