Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is now generating about $3 billion in annualized revenue, according to two CNBC sources familiar with the company’s financial performance — a stunning leap from the $1 billion run-rate it posted just five months ago.
The surge is being viewed as one of the strongest signs yet that generative AI is rapidly transitioning from experimental hype to a commercial engine driving enterprise transformation.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, Anthropic has become a dominant player in enterprise-grade AI models, particularly in the code generation space. The company’s recent growth, according to one source, accelerated after its run-rate crossed $2 billion at the end of March, hitting $3 billion by May — an unprecedented pace among software-as-a-service companies.
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At the heart of this growth is Claude, Anthropic’s generative AI platform, which businesses are adopting to build custom AI tools, automate tasks, and support internal development. While Claude trails OpenAI’s ChatGPT in consumer popularity — drawing just 2% of ChatGPT’s web traffic in April, according to Similarweb — it has become the go-to model for many large companies looking for reliable and secure AI infrastructure.
Enterprise AI is Heating Up
Anthropic’s enterprise-first approach is beginning to pay off. While OpenAI, valued at around $300 billion, has capitalized heavily on consumer subscriptions, especially through ChatGPT, Anthropic is securing recurring revenue from corporate clients by integrating its AI directly into their operations. Its backers include Amazon, which has committed up to $4 billion, and Alphabet, which has also invested billions to ensure the integration of Claude into cloud platforms.
The company’s $3.5 billion fundraising round earlier this year valued it at $61.4 billion, reinforcing investor belief that Anthropic is a viable long-term leader in the AI race.
According to Meritech Capital General Partner Alex Clayton, Anthropic’s growth is exceptional by any measure.
“We’ve looked at the IPOs of over 200 public software companies, and this growth rate has never happened,” he said.
Clayton, who is not an investor in Anthropic, compared it favorably with Snowflake, which took six quarters to scale from $1 billion to $2 billion in annualized revenue — a pace Anthropic surpassed in a single quarter.
AI Market Could Exceed $1.3 Trillion by 2030
The growth of firms like Anthropic and OpenAI is feeding into a broader AI market explosion. According to estimates by Bloomberg Intelligence, the global generative AI industry is projected to grow into a $1.3 trillion market by 2032, up from just $40 billion in 2022. PwC, meanwhile, projects that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, with $6.6 trillion expected from increased productivity and $9.1 trillion from consumption effects.
But some analysts now believe even those numbers might understate the impact. With the flood of investor capital, rapid enterprise deployment, and governments betting big on AI innovation, the industry’s growth may exceed current forecasts within the next five years. Anthropic, OpenAI, Cohere, Mistral, and others are all drawing in multi-billion-dollar investments at record-breaking valuations. The tech sector’s race to integrate AI into everything from logistics to legal work is accelerating faster than even bullish projections had anticipated.
However, while both Anthropic and OpenAI offer tools for business and public use, their strategic priorities are diverging. OpenAI is increasingly shaping itself as a consumer-centric AI company, with millions of ChatGPT Plus subscribers contributing the bulk of its revenue. In May, the company reported that paying enterprise seats for ChatGPT had grown from 2 million to 3 million, with T-Mobile and Morgan Stanley among its enterprise users.
Anthropic, however, is becoming the AI supplier of choice for enterprises seeking safer, more specialized models. Unlike ChatGPT, which aims for broad public engagement, Claude is being tailored for integrations in finance, healthcare, legal services, and coding — areas where companies are more cautious and require guardrails and interpretability.
The AI Arms Race Is Just Beginning
As investment pours in and adoption widens, AI firms are not just reshaping the tech sector but also remaking global economic trajectories. Countries are competing to establish national AI champions, and industries are being forced to retool around AI capabilities or risk obsolescence.
Anthropic’s surge to a $3 billion run-rate, just three years after launch, is a watershed moment, not just for the company but for the entire sector. With generative AI still in its infancy, the current figures may be just the beginning.
