Anthropic set for first profitable quarter as OpenAI and xAI continue burning billions - Tech Startups

Artificial intelligence companies have spent the past three years burning cash at a pace Silicon Valley has rarely seen. Billions have gone into GPUs, data centers, talent wars, and training larger AI models. Profitability felt far away, almost irrelevant.

Now, Anthropic may be about to change that narrative.

The San Francisco AI startup is on track to post its first profitable quarter, putting it ahead of rivals OpenAI and xAI in the race to prove that frontier AI can become a sustainable business and not just an expensive science experiment.

"Anthropic is poised to achieve its first profitable quarter ahead of rivals OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI after a period of soaring revenues at the company," The Financial Times reported.

Anthropic has told investors it expects second-quarter revenue to hit $10.9 billion, more than double the $4.8 billion it generated in the first quarter. The company is projected to post an operating profit of roughly $559 million for the quarter.

"The San Francisco-based AI group has told investors that its revenue for the second quarter of 2026 will be $10.9bn, more than double the $4.8bn posted for the first three months of the year," The Financial Times added, citing people familiar with the matter.

The numbers mark a major shift in the AI industry. For much of the generative AI boom, the focus centered on growth at any cost. AI labs raised massive funding rounds and spent aggressively to train larger models and secure enough computing capacity to stay competitive.

Anthropic's projected profitability suggests the business side of AI may be maturing faster than many expected.

The company is reportedly close to finalizing a $30 billion funding round that would value it at roughly $900 billion. That places Anthropic among the most valuable private technology companies in the world and strengthens its position ahead of a possible IPO later this year.

At the same time, rivals continue posting staggering losses tied to infrastructure spending.

According to The Information, OpenAI generated about $5.7 billion in first-quarter revenue, outperforming Anthropic on overall sales. Growth has been fueled by enterprise adoption, premium AI products, ChatGPT subscriptions, early advertising tests, and demand for its Codex coding agent.

Still, profitability remains years away.

OpenAI has reportedly told investors it does not expect to become profitable until 2030 and may spend more than $600 billion before reaching that point. The company has been raising capital aggressively as it builds out computing infrastructure to support future AI models and global demand.

Elon Musk's xAI is facing similar pressures.

The company, now merged with SpaceX, has invested heavily in AI infrastructure and large-scale data center projects. SpaceX disclosed this week that its AI operations posted an operating loss of $6.4 billion.

Anthropic is hardly slowing its own spending.

The company has reportedly agreed to spend $15 billion annually on computing power from SpaceX, according to SpaceX's prospectus filed with U.S. regulators. Anthropic has signed separate long-term infrastructure agreements with Google and Amazon that could eventually amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in additional spending.

That spending spree reflects a broader reality inside the AI race. Revenue is climbing fast across the industry, yet the cost of staying competitive keeps climbing too.

Anthropic declined to comment on the financial projections. The Wall Street Journal previously reported details tied to the company's quarterly performance and IPO discussions.

The bigger takeaway is becoming harder to ignore: generative AI is no longer just attracting users and headlines. It is starting to produce real enterprise revenue at a scale large enough to reshape the economics of the software industry.