Anthropic Prospectus Reveals: Why Are Individual Users Just the Fuel for Businesses to Acquire Customers?

According to Woofun AI, Anthropic officially submitted an S-1 prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26. It plans to list on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, and the stock code is ANT.

Although the issue price range has not been disclosed, market discussions on its valuation have surged to the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion range. The publication of this document not only marks a milestone in the AI giant's entry into the capital market, but also completely unravels the underlying truth of its business model through detailed financial data and business logic: under what appears to be a mass consumer application, Anthropic is actually a ToB company with an extreme focus on the enterprise market. The role of individual users in their strategic layout is not a core source of revenue, but rather a key 'fuel' for companies to acquire customers.

In terms of financial performance, Anthropic is at a critical juncture of explosive growth and profit transformation. In the first half of 2026, the company's revenue reached $16.286 billion, a leap up from $1,163 billion in the same period in 2025. More notably, in the second quarter, Anthropic handed over $974 million in operating profit, ushering in the first operating profit quarter in the company's history.

However, the net loss of up to $80.7 billion on the book did not hide the increase in profitability. Of this, the majority of which was $72.388 billion stemmed from convertible bonds, derivative liabilities, and changes in the fair value of SAFE, which were non-cash accounting expenses.

This financial structure clearly shows that the company's core business hematopoietic capacity has been formed and is growing strongly.

By thoroughly analyzing the revenue structure, the marginalized position of individual users is clear at a glance. For the full year of 2025, pay-per-use revenue was $3.796 billion, while subscription revenue was only $789 million, or about 83% to 17%. By the first half of 2026, pay-per-use revenue had soared to $13.064 billion, and subscription revenue was $3.22 billion. The former still accounts for about 80% of revenue, and subscription revenue only accounts for about 20%.

Notably, this 20% of subscription revenue includes Claude Pro and Claude Max for individual users, as well as enterprise-grade Team and Enterprise plans. Since individual subscriptions are not split separately in the prospectus, this means that real money contributed by individual users definitely accounts for less than 20% of total revenue, and may even be lower.

This disparity ratio directly reflects the degree of resource inclination of the company towards different user groups.

Reliance on cloud vendor channels and an expanding customer base form the two pillars of Anthropic's revenue growth. The share of revenue from sales to customers through cloud vendors such as Amazon (AMZN.US), Google (GOOGL.US), and Microsoft (MSFT.US) has been rising: around 11% in 2023, 32% in 2024, 47% in 2025, and 48% in the first half of 2026. Almost half of the country is supported by the distribution pipelines of the three major cloud giants.

At the same time, the number of institutional clients is growing rapidly. As of September 30, 2026, the number of customers contributing more than $100,000 in revenue over the past 12 months (according to independent organizations) skyrocketed from over 950 a year ago to over 11,900. The customer structure is healthy. No single customer accounted for more than 10% of revenue in the first 9 months of 2026, and the top five customers combined about 25%.

This diversified and high-growth customer base provides a solid foundation for the company's continued expansion.

In the definition of core metrics, Anthropic further excludes the influence of individual users. The prospectus defines individual paying users as “prosumers,” that is, individuals who subscribe to AI tools to do intellectual work, such as researchers, developers, etc.

However, the entire 300-page prospectus did not disclose the number of daily active or monthly active users, or even the number of paid subscribers. This attitude is best reflected in the net revenue retention rate. As of September 30, 2026, Anthropic's net revenue retention rate was around 900%, but when calculating this metric, Claude Pro and Claude Max individual subscribers were excluded on the grounds that fixed-price subscriptions did not reflect expansion and contraction. When a company doesn't show user activity and excludes individual subscribers from the core retention rate calculation, the weight of the average individual user is self-evident.

The core driving force of enterprise-side monetization is Claude Code and efficient allocation of computing power. According to the prospectus, Claude Code defines a form of autonomous AI work, and intelligence that can write its own code, run tests, and fix bugs consumes a lot of computing power. Claude Enterprise users who didn't use Claude Code spent less than $75 per month in the third quarter of 2026, while those using the top 5% spent about 20 times the former.

This high-value customer supports the company's miracle of human effectiveness: as of September 30, 2026, the company employs approximately 5,300 people, and has a per capita revenue of over $6.6 million over the past 12 months, compared to just $1.4 million a year ago.

According to data compiled by Woofun AI, sales and marketing expenses for the first half of 2026 were US$38.08 billion, which included the computing power and infrastructure costs provided for free access, which meant that free users were treated as customer acquisition costs on the books.

Individual users strategically play the role of “Tinder,” aiming to penetrate the corporate market through word of mouth. The prospectus revisited the growth flywheel: Claude's proliferation was largely spontaneous and driven by software developers and professional individual users. These people first use Claude on a personal level and then drive wider adoption within the organization, saving the trouble of setting up a huge direct sales team. Software developers are a core group. They understand system operation, have credibility in evaluating technical tools, and often promote the adoption of new technologies internally. Earning their trust is the foundation for Claude's widespread spread among the company's employees.

However, there are weaknesses in this model: the prospectus warns that competitors with stronger consumer businesses may use consumer apps to take away the “starting point of corporate adoption”, that is, individual users, thereby adversely affecting the company's business. Anthropic requires individual users to act as word-of-mouth and promoters, but its core resources are also organized around enterprise scenarios. As a result, when computing power is limited and large corporate orders pour in, individual users are the first to be limited.

In summary, Anthropic is essentially a To-B company clothed in a consumer-grade mantle. Its research priorities, product roadmap, and marketing team are all organized around enterprise usage scenarios. The real business is selling pay-as-you-go computing power and self-working agents to 10,000 companies. When a company whose valuation hits $2 trillion puts all of its chips on enterprise workflows and code agents, the status of individual users only becomes more marginal. In the future, if more developers turn to competitors due to poor experience, whether Anthropic can maintain its proud corporate adoption starting point will be the biggest geographical and market challenge facing its long-term growth.