Growth among big software giants is yet more proof that enterprise demand for messaging and data/AI tools grows faster than perhaps any other segment of tech.
(Disclosure: I have no financial interest in Slack, good or bad.)
- Enterprise Demand Drives Forecasts for Anthropic’s Growth
- Aggressive ARR Goals Indicate Velocity Through 2026 Targets
- Model Strategy and Margin Enhancements Signal Efficiency Gains
- Funding Outlook and Valuation Aspirations for the Next Raise
- Competitive Context with OpenAI and Differing Cost Structures
- What to Watch Next as Anthropic Scales Enterprise Adoption
Anyway, despite projections of $70 billion in revenue by 2028, according to a report from The Information (an understatement), we don’t actually want an AI assistant based on being able to talk to it if they’re worse at GAAP than talking directly to people. The forecast, which sits alongside anticipated $17 billion in free cash flow that year, is one hell of a vote of confidence for a B2B-first approach centered around Claude and a growing array of enterprise services.
Enterprise Demand Drives Forecasts for Anthropic’s Growth
And Anthropic, according to The Information, projects $3.8 billion in revenue this year from API access to its models (about double what OpenAI is said to be aiming for), indicating swift uptake by software teams and corporate IT.
Anthropic’s developer-geared product, called Claude Code, is nearing $1 billion in annualized revenue, too, and has jumped significantly from midyear levels — evidence that code assistants are at last becoming fundamental to enterprise workflows rather than proof-of-concept projects.
Partnerships are doing heavy lifting. Microsoft has started implementing Anthropic’s models in Microsoft 365 applications and Copilot, while Salesforce is extending its efforts with Claude in its CRM stack. The large-scale Deloitte and Cognizant deployments — with both involving hundreds of thousands of users — show just how fast a seat count can compound once a model leaps security, compliance, and ROI hurdles in big organizations.
Aggressive ARR Goals Indicate Velocity Through 2026 Targets
The momentum looks significant heading into the mid-2020s. Anthropic is on track to reach $9 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of next year, with internal targets of reaching $20 billion to $26 billion in 2026, Reuters reported. That pace suggests increasing penetration in regulated industries and broadening beyond early copilots to wider knowledge management, search, and workflow automation uses.
Model Strategy and Margin Enhancements Signal Efficiency Gains
Anthropic’s most recent models prioritize cost-efficiency at scale. The company emerged from stealth in early 2021 and introduced Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Haiku 4.5, the smaller models intended to produce high performance with reduced inference costs for efficiency at scale — suited to enterprise workloads (e.g., summarization, classification, structured extraction). Vertical offerings for Financial Services and a new Enterprise Search product that links up internal apps help make usage go beyond chat and into business-critical embedded workflows where value is captured daily.
The payoff to the bottom line is evident in margin guidance. According to The Information, Anthropic predicts gross margins of about 50 percent this year and 77 percent by 2028, which is quite a reversal of fortune from negative 94 percent last year. The gains from model optimizations, smarter routing across model tiers, and more aggressive context management together with scale discounts on compute are probably the cause for this increase.
Funding Outlook and Valuation Aspirations for the Next Raise
Anthropic raised $13 billion in a round that closed in September, which was also heavily oversubscribed, at a valuation of $170 billion, and the company might target a next raise at $300 billion to $400 billion, The Information reports. The 2028 cash flow projection, even if not the same as profit, is an estimate from the business that it expects to have more money coming in across its operations, investments, and financing than going out — as it continues to expand.
Investors will watch liabilities closely. The public disclosures have included a $2.5 billion credit facility and an agreement to pay at least $1.5 billion as part of a legal settlement for a copyright suit filed by a group of authors. The extent to which the company can grow its way through such commitments will be one of the most important tests of its operating discipline.
Competitive Context with OpenAI and Differing Cost Structures
OpenAI, recently valued at about $500 billion, combines a B2B push with enormous consumer reach, anchored by an estimated 800 million weekly users. Reports suggest OpenAI is tracking toward $13 billion in revenue this year, with a goal of $100 billion in 2027. But it’s also expected to take on significant infrastructure costs, including potentially burning as much as $14 billion in 2026 and a cumulative $115 billion by 2029 from an investment in compute.
Anthropic’s approach is a narrower path toward enterprise use, relying on channel partners and model efficiency to scale its unit economics. If the company can drive margin expansion while widening its product footprint, it may establish a durable position alongside larger and more consumer-focused competitors.
What to Watch Next as Anthropic Scales Enterprise Adoption
Key signals over the next 12–24 months include conversion of pilots to standardized enterprise deployments, depth of Microsoft and Salesforce integrations, and uptake on Enterprise Search across knowledge-heavier teams. Trends in capacity and cost for AI compute, the development of copyright frameworks, and how finished products that incorporate smaller models from partial payments will also influence whether Anthropic’s $70 billion target is a ceiling or a waypoint.
