---
title: "Anthropic let rivals pay to copy Claude, then locked them out before a $2 trillion IPO"
description: "Anthropic told pre-IPO investors that distillation, rival labs paying to copy Claude's behavior, made up 5 to 7 percent of revenue before it curtailed the trade in Q3. Held at that share, the line runs near $4 billion a year, a cost the pitch for a listing above $2 trillion had never carried."
publisher: "The Inference"
section: "Deals"
published: 2026-10-15T18:28:39.399Z
modified: 2026-10-15T18:28:39.399Z
canonical: https://theinference.org/article/anthropic-let-rivals-pay-to-copy-claude-then-locked-them-out-before-a-2-trillion-ipo
language: en
keywords: "Anthropic, IPO, AI Safety, Revenue, Claude"
---

# Anthropic let rivals pay to copy Claude, then locked them out before a $2 trillion IPO

> Anthropic told pre-IPO investors that distillation, rival labs paying to copy Claude's behavior, made up 5 to 7 percent of revenue before it curtailed the trade in Q3. Held at that share, the line runs near $4 billion a year, a cost the pitch for a listing above $2 trillion had never carried.

## The copy fee buried in the IPO meetings

The number nobody led with from Wednesday's pre-IPO meetings: [Anthropic](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/anthropic)'s rivals were paying it to be copied, in [an offering bankers say could value the company above $2 trillion](https://theinference.org/article/anthropic-wants-2-trillion-of-public-money-and-none-of-its-votes) [3][7]. Distillation, running queries through Claude and training a rival model on the replies, [accounted for 5 to 7 percent of revenue](https://www.tmtbreakout.com/p/tmtb-morning-wrap-a44), and Anthropic told investors it materially curtailed the practice in the third quarter [1][3]. On second-quarter revenue of $11.5 billion, that share is more than half a billion dollars of competitor money [2][4].

## Growth slowed the quarter the meter stopped

The disclosure landed in the quarter investors were reading for permission to pay $2 trillion [3][7]. [Revenue reached $16.8 billion, up 45 percent sequentially](https://www.ft.com/content/11632d03-358c-454b-af95-d06d4072932b), after roughly 140 percent growth in the second quarter [1][4][5][6]. [Goldman Sachs](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/goldman-sachs) and [Morgan Stanley](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/morgan-stanley) lead an offering bankers have said could raise more than $100 billion [3][7].

*Chart: **Revenue more than tripled in 2026; quarterly growth slowed from ~140% to 45%** Anthropic quarterly revenue in billions of dollars: Q1 4.7, Q2 11.5, Q3 16.8*

*Figures disclosed at the October 14, 2026, pre-IPO investor meetings; Q1 and Q2 as tracked by FUNDA and reported by Reuters attendees (Reuters put Q2 at $11.6B). US$ billions. [1][4][6]*

## A safety policy that cuts the top line

The case against those paying customers came from Anthropic itself. [Its September report, 154 pages titled Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI](https://gizmodo.com/china-probes-deepseek-moonshot-ai-over-anthropics-claims-they-route-requests-to-claude-2000815507), says [DeepSeek](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/deepseek) routed 12.1 million user inputs into Claude over 14 days in July and Moonshot more than 23 million between May and July; China's regulator is now probing both labs [8]. [Meta](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/meta) and [Microsoft](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/microsoft), two more large clients, now lean more on their own models [3]. A buyer in the listing is underwriting a revenue line the company's own policy removes.

*Chart: **The curtailed distillation line ran near $4B a year** Bars showing distillation revenue implied by a 5 to 7 percent share of Q2 and Q3 revenue, and the annualized equivalent near $4 billion*

*Implied by the disclosed 5-7% revenue share applied to disclosed quarterly revenue; ranges show the low and high ends of the share. Derived, not a company figure. [1][2][4]*

## Margins flipped, the run rate did not

Elsewhere the meeting was friendlier. Anthropic banked $1.70 of revenue per dollar of compute, up from $0.63 in 2025, on 11 percent operating margins and positive cash flow [1][3]. TMT Breakout's own estimate still puts September's annualized run rate, one month of revenue scaled to a year, near $70 billion, short of the high-70s investors expected, and pins $4 to 7 billion of the gap on the lockout plus Meta and Microsoft moving to their own models [1]. [SemiAnalysis](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/semianalysis) projects about $74 billion by year-end, against summer investor hopes above $100 billion [3]. The $110 billion figure Reuters carried came from attendees, not company guidance [1][6]. And a price war has arrived: Anthropic priced Claude Haiku 5.5 about 75 percent below its predecessor this month [3].

*Chart: **Analysts see the run rate near $70B; summer hopes were above $100B** Bars comparing views of Anthropic's annualized run rate: TMT Breakout near $70 billion for September, SemiAnalysis about $74 billion by year-end, and a $110 billion figure Reuters carried from meeting attendees, against summer investor hopes above $100 billion*

*Views of Anthropic's annualized run rate around the October 14 pre-IPO meetings: TMT Breakout's September estimate, SemiAnalysis's year-end projection, and the $110B figure Reuters carried from meeting attendees. The reference line marks summer investor hopes of more than $100B. None are company guidance. US$ billions. [1][3][6]*

## Menlo reads the same numbers the other way

Matt Murphy, a Menlo Ventures partner and early Anthropic investor, sees the same numbers the other way: since Claude 3.5 Opus, Anthropic has [held more than 70 percent of tokens and revenue on OpenRouter](https://seekingalpha.com/news/4653440-anthropic-is-gaining-market-share-not-losing-it-menlo-ventures-matt-murphy), a marketplace for model access, and enterprise AI spending grew about fivefold this year [9]. Usage reports do show tokens shifting to roughly 80 percent open-weight models, ones anyone can download and run, in twelve weeks; companies will still cap them at 20 to 30 percent of tokens, Murphy says, because frontier intelligence matters [9].

## October decides the $100 billion question

The next reading is October's revenue, expected to re-accelerate on the newer Claude models Opus 5.5 and Sonnet [1]. The listing may slip until after the November midterm elections [6]. New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, who oversees pension funds holding more than $325 billion, [has asked Anthropic to pause the offering until it closes the safety gaps its own filing concedes](https://seekingalpha.com/news/4653525-nyc-comptroller-calls-for-anthropic-to-put-ipo-on-hold-over-safety-concerns) [7]. That prospectus [warns advanced AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity](https://theinference.org/article/anthropic-s-leaked-filing-warns-of-extinction-then-signs-518-billion-of-compute-it-cannot-cancel) [6]. October's revenue will show whether the growth Anthropic switched off comes back. Until then, buyers are asked to pay above $2 trillion [3][7] for a company that has shown it will cut a paying line of business as a safety measure.

## Takeaway

A safety-motivated lockout of a line worth 5 to 7 percent of revenue, near $4 billion a year, hangs over a listing pitched above $2 trillion; October's revenue will show whether the growth Anthropic switched off comes back.

## Sources

1. [TMT Breakout (Substack), "TMTB Morning Wrap", 15 October 2026](https://www.tmtbreakout.com/p/tmtb-morning-wrap-a44)
2. [Simon Willison, post on X, 15 October 2026](https://x.com/simonw/status/2110721515130089787)
3. [Yahoo Finance (Kamina Bashir, via BeInCrypto), "Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO Pitch Meets a Revenue Growth Slowdown", 15 October 2026](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/anthropic-2-trillion-ipo-pitch-045117254.html)
4. [FUNDA (Substack), "Column|Anthropic: What the New 3Q Numbers Mean", 15 October 2026](https://fundaai.substack.com/p/columnanthropic-what-the-new-3q-numbers)
5. [Financial Times, "Anthropic tells investors quarterly revenue up nearly 50% to $16.8bn ahead of IPO", 14 October 2026 (paywalled; headline confirmed)](https://www.ft.com/content/11632d03-358c-454b-af95-d06d4072932b)
6. [Reuters (Milana Vinn, Krystal Hu), "At Anthropic pre-IPO meet: 'Thinking' caps, surging revenue, no human extinction", 14 October 2026](https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/general/at-anthropic-pre-ipo-meet-thinking-caps-surging-revenue-no-human-extinction/ar-AA2efIaJ)
7. [Seeking Alpha, "NYC Comptroller calls for Anthropic to put IPO on hold over safety concerns", 15 October 2026](https://seekingalpha.com/news/4653525-nyc-comptroller-calls-for-anthropic-to-put-ipo-on-hold-over-safety-concerns)
8. [Gizmodo (AJ Dellinger), "China Probes DeepSeek, Moonshot AI Over Anthropic's Claims They Route Requests to Claude", 22 September 2026](https://gizmodo.com/china-probes-deepseek-moonshot-ai-over-anthropics-claims-they-route-requests-to-claude-2000815507)
9. [Seeking Alpha, "Anthropic is gaining market share, not losing it: Menlo Ventures' Matt Murphy", 15 October 2026](https://seekingalpha.com/news/4653440-anthropic-is-gaining-market-share-not-losing-it-menlo-ventures-matt-murphy)


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Anthropic let rivals pay to copy Claude, then locked them out before a $2 trillion IPO — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/anthropic-let-rivals-pay-to-copy-claude-then-locked-them-out-before-a-2-trillion-ipo