SemiAnalysis just released an in-depth report on Anthropic, and it's quite a read.

In short: among AI labs, someone has finally managed to align "growth" and "profitability."

• ARR: $9 billion → $30 billion → $60 billion+, like a rocket ship
• Net retention NDR 500% — existing customers keep growing bigger
• Gross margin flipped from -94% to 60%+, API business at 80%+
• 3Q26 operating profit exceeds $1 billion

The most striking is the comparison with OpenAI: one charges by usage with positive gross margin; the other still relies on subscriptions with profit -100%.

The report's valuation anchor: $6 trillion, base case, not optimistic.

The logic is actually simple:
→ High-margin inference revenue
→ Invest in the next-gen model
→ Widening intelligence gap
→ Stronger pricing power
→ More high-margin revenue

The flywheel spins, and others can't catch up.
→ It should IPO first, forcing OpenAI to raise at a worse position.

The first to go public locks up capital and narrative.

But there are also a few thorns:
• Enterprises are starting to set budget caps for AI
• OpenAI reportedly plans to cut token prices
• Compute gap is a hard constraint — 2030 needs 100GW+
• Regulatory model lockouts — low probability, but tail risk