Anthropic Swings to Q3 Operating Loss After Cutting AI Model Prices as Cost Pressure Builds

Anthropic has lowered prices for its Claude models to win customers, but a surge in computing costs is increasing pressure on profitability.

Decrypt reported on November 3 that Anthropic said in an amended filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that AI model price cuts and contract discounts offset about $600 million of revenue growth. Revenue still increased as usage expanded, but lower pricing weighed on results.

Computing and infrastructure costs rose about 77% over the same period, climbing to $9.86 billion from $5.56 billion. Spending on computing and infrastructure per dollar of revenue increased to 58 cents from about 48 cents in the previous quarter. Those costs include computing resources used not only for customer services, but also for AI model research, training and internal operations.

Anthropic recently lowered token prices for Claude Opus 5.5 compared with the previous model, and in October introduced Haiku 5.5, a lower-cost model designed for high-volume workloads. According to the company, the cost per task for Opus 5.5 fell about 40% from the earlier model. The strategy is to expand usage through lower prices and better performance.

But profitability worsened as infrastructure costs climbed rapidly. Anthropic typically secures computing capacity 12 to 18 months before it is used, leaving much of that spending difficult to adjust in the short term. In the third quarter, in particular, the company spent about $5 billion on short-term computing contracts that were more expensive than long-term agreements.

As a result, Anthropic swung to an operating loss of $567 million in the third quarter after posting operating profit of $974 million in the second quarter. Demand for AI services is rising quickly, but the infrastructure investment needed to support that growth is limiting improvements in profitability.

Long-term financial obligations are also in focus. In the amended filing disclosed ahead of its initial public offering, Anthropic said total contractual commitments related to leases and purchases amount to about $895.4 billion. Most of that is tied to computing and infrastructure, making the company's ability to raise funds for future large-scale investment a key challenge.

Anthropic filed a registration statement last month for a Nasdaq listing and plans to trade under the ticker ANT. Investors are watching whether the company can turn rising usage into improved profitability as competition in AI model pricing intensifies.