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MPS BRIEF · OCTOBER 2026

Anthropic’s S-1 is a customer report. Could you write yours?

The headline number is an $80.7 billion loss. The better read is the funnel — and when diligence opens, yours will be read the same way.

By David Morris and Jeff Culliton

4 MIN READ

Anthropic made its S-1 public on Monday. The headline number is an $80.7 billion net loss for the first half of 2026.

That is the wrong number to look at.

Daniel McCarthy, a marketing professor at the University of Maryland’s Smith School and one of the sharpest readers of public filings working today, went past it within hours.2 Of that $80.7 billion, $72.4 billion is non-cash fair-value changes on convertible notes and SAFEs. The company got more valuable, so the paper it had issued got more expensive.

$72.4B1

Of the $80.7B first-half net loss that is non-cash fair-value changes on convertible notes and SAFEs.

$974M1

Q2 operating income — an 8.4% GAAP operating margin in the first profitable operating quarter.

His summary was five sentences:

“Explosive growth. Lots of customers. Great funnel. Mostly B2B.”

Every number was a customer number

Revenue was $16.3 billion in the first half, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier. And underneath it, a ladder:

$100K+ / YEAR

11,9001

Up from 950 a year before.

$1M+ / YEAR

1,900+1

Customers spending over $1 million.

$10M+ / YEAR

~2501

Customers spending over $10 million.

The structural read is correct: a company is worth what its customers are worth. That is the core of McCarthy’s work on customer-based valuation. Investors price the funnel: how many customers you acquire, how long they stay, and how far they expand.

Anthropic did not file a technology story. It filed a customer ladder, with $100K, $1M and $10M rungs, and the count on each one.

The read is also incomplete

Nobody is going to write that analysis about a $30 million company. Your buyer will.

When a PE sponsor, lender or acquirer opens diligence, they ask for exactly what Anthropic disclosed:

Customers by tier

Retention by cohort

Expansion separated from new logos

The version we see

The growth story.

Revenue grew 22% last year. The data room asks for customer counts by revenue band. The CRM gives one number and finance gives another.

The concentration story.

The top 20 accounts carry 60% of revenue, and nobody owns them after the first invoice. Expansion happened, but no one can show where or why.

Then the multiple doesn’t move.

Where this sits in the CORE Method™

The pattern lives in Revenue Architecture: the tiers, the expansion path, and the motion that moves a $100K customer to $1M. That ladder is designed. It does not happen on its own.

Revenue Architecture rests on the layers below it:

  1. ClarityDecides which customers you are built to grow.
  2. Operating ModelDecides who owns a customer after the sale and what they are measured on.
  3. Revenue ArchitectureDesigns the tiers and the expansion path. Skip the first two, and spend in Execution buys new logos that never climb.

Before.

The account team “handles” existing customers between new deals.

After.

Expansion has a named owner, a number, and a tier map reviewed every month.

THREE DIAGNOSTICS FOR THIS WEEK

Pull your customer count by revenue tier from one system.

If finance and the CRM disagree, that is the first fix.

Find the share of this year’s growth that came from existing customers.

If you can’t produce it, your buyer will assume the worst.

Name the person who owns a customer after the first invoice.

If the answer is “the team,” the answer is nobody.

Anthropic’s filing will be read for its loss. The better read is its funnel.

Yours will be read the same way.

Foundation first. Then the funnel.

SOURCES

  1. Anthropic, Form S-1 registration statement, made public October 26, 2026 — first-half 2026 results, Q2 operating income and customer tier counts.

  2. Daniel McCarthy, University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, LinkedIn commentary on the Anthropic S-1, October 2026.

AUTHORS

David Morris · Jeff Culliton

Foundation first. Then the funnel.

See how the MPS Core Method builds Clarity and Operating Model so Revenue Architecture has something to stand on.

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