Note that in order for Anthropic revenue to 10x this year, they’ll already have to increase $/FLOP (i.e. revenue per unit of compute. Profit margins basically.) To increase it another 10x the following year, they’ll probably need to triple $/FLOP, because their compute will only roughly triple next year. Ditto for 2028. All this is a reason to doubt premise 1 basically; in the past they’ve been able to grow revenue in large part by just allocating more of their compute to serving customers, but now they’ll have to charge customers more per FLOP.
I wonder if two other factors might also work against the 10x growth per year as a norm. One, standard S-curve growth patterns for start-up enterprises. What the time period for the high growth phase might be could be interesting—does rapid advancement of AI itself point to longer or shorter period of revenue growth? My quest is it might shorten it but have not really thought about that before.
The other is just opportunity costs. All that money is coming from somewhere, not thin air, and we have some real constraints on monetary velocity as well. So just how much of the money supply can AI revenue growth curves eat up?
Note that in order for Anthropic revenue to 10x this year, they’ll already have to increase $/FLOP (i.e. revenue per unit of compute. Profit margins basically.) To increase it another 10x the following year, they’ll probably need to triple $/FLOP, because their compute will only roughly triple next year. Ditto for 2028. All this is a reason to doubt premise 1 basically; in the past they’ve been able to grow revenue in large part by just allocating more of their compute to serving customers, but now they’ll have to charge customers more per FLOP.
According to their twitter, Anthropic revenue grew 3x in the first 3 months of 2026, which this comment ~implies would be unlikely
Well, I certainly was surprised! So, guilty as charged I guess? I still stand by the comment. What parts of it do you disagree with?
(Probably Hoagy is unlikely to comment due to being an Anthropic employee.)
I wonder if two other factors might also work against the 10x growth per year as a norm. One, standard S-curve growth patterns for start-up enterprises. What the time period for the high growth phase might be could be interesting—does rapid advancement of AI itself point to longer or shorter period of revenue growth? My quest is it might shorten it but have not really thought about that before.
The other is just opportunity costs. All that money is coming from somewhere, not thin air, and we have some real constraints on monetary velocity as well. So just how much of the money supply can AI revenue growth curves eat up?
Update: Semianalysis claims: