According to a report, Anthropic expects to generate as much as seventy billion dollars in revenue and seventeen billion dollars in cash flow in 2028. These ambitious growth projections are reportedly fueled by the rapid adoption of Anthropic’s business products.
Last month, it was reported that Anthropic is projected to more than double, and potentially nearly triple, its annual revenue run rate next year. The company is reportedly on track to meet a goal of nine billion dollars in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2025. It has also set a target of twenty billion to twenty-six billion dollars in annual recurring revenue for 2026.
Anthropic expects its revenue this year from selling access to its AI models through an application programming interface to hit three point eight billion dollars. This figure is double the one point eight billion dollars in API sales revenue that its rival OpenAI expects to generate. One of its products, Claude Code, is reportedly close to generating one billion dollars in annualized revenue, a significant increase from about four hundred million dollars in July.
The company’s aggressive business-to-business strategy has become clearer in recent weeks. Microsoft and Anthropic recently began a partnership to use Anthropic’s models in Microsoft 365 apps and in Copilot. Anthropic has also expanded its partnership with Salesforce and plans to roll out its AI assistant Claude to hundreds of thousands of employees at Deloitte and Cognizant.
Regarding model improvements, Anthropic has launched smaller and more cost-effective models over the last two months. These models, Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Haiku 4.5, are designed to appeal to businesses deploying AI at a large scale. The startup has also expanded Claude for Financial Services and introduced a feature called Enterprise Search. This allows businesses to connect all their internal work applications to Claude.
Anthropic might use its strong growth to raise more funds. The startup last raised thirteen billion dollars from investors in September. That funding round was oversubscribed and valued the company at one hundred seventy billion dollars. If it raises money again, Anthropic would likely target a valuation between three hundred billion and four hundred billion dollars.
The reporting also includes a projection of seventeen billion dollars in cash flow for 2028. It is important to note that cash flow is not the same as profit. Cash flow simply means a company has more money coming in than is going out from its operations, investments, and financing activities. Anthropic’s publicly available liabilities include a two point five billion dollar credit facility and a one point five billion dollar legal settlement from a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors.
The company expects its gross profit margin to reach fifty percent this year and seventy-seven percent in 2028. This is a substantial increase from negative ninety-four percent last year. The gross profit margin measures a company’s profitability after accounting for the direct costs of producing its goods and services.
OpenAI, Anthropic’s main rival, was recently valued at five hundred billion dollars. It is also pursuing a business-to-business strategy, but it is coupled with a strong consumer push fueled by its eight hundred million weekly users. OpenAI expects to generate thirteen billion dollars in revenue this year and reach one hundred billion dollars in revenue in 2027.
A key difference emerges in their financial projections. While Anthropic is projecting positive cash flow by 2028, OpenAI is expecting sizable losses. OpenAI’s cash burn is projected to reach fourteen billion dollars in 2026 and is expected to mount to one hundred fifteen billion dollars through 2029 as the company ramps up its infrastructure spending.