Anthropic Revenue Surged 80-Fold in Q1, CEO Says

Anthropic’s revenue and usage grew at roughly 80 times their prior-year pace in the first quarter on an annualized basis, CNBC reported Wednesday, a surge CEO Dario Amodei said explains the persistent shortfalls in computing power that have frustrated developers on the platform.

CEO Calls Growth ‘Just Crazy’

Speaking at Anthropic’s developer conference in San Francisco, Amodei told attendees the company had originally built its infrastructure plans around a ten-fold increase in demand. The actual figure came in eight times higher than that forecast. He described the pace as “just crazy” and said it has been “too hard to handle.” Amodei said the company is moving as fast as it can to expand capacity and pledged to pass additional compute on to users as soon as it becomes available.

The comments offer the clearest public accounting yet of why Anthropic acknowledged last month that demand for its Claude models had created what it called “inevitable strain” on its systems. The company said at the time that reliability and performance had suffered, especially during peak hours.

SpaceX Deal and a $900 Billion Valuation

Hours before Amodei took the stage, Anthropic announced an agreement with SpaceX to access the full compute capacity of the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee. The deal grants Anthropic access to more than 300 megawatts of power. SpaceX owns rival AI lab xAI, now rebranded as SpaceXAI, making the partnership a notable cross-competitive arrangement.

The Memphis agreement follows a separate multibillion-dollar compute deal with Amazon. Together the two arrangements signal how urgently Anthropic is trying to match supply to its rapidly expanding user base.

Separately, the company is in advanced talks with investors about a fresh funding round that would value it at roughly $900 billion, according to CNBC’s earlier reporting. That figure would place Anthropic ahead of OpenAI by market capitalisation.

Background: Claude Code Sparked the Explosion

Much of the growth traces back to Claude Code, a developer-focused tool Anthropic launched last year. The product gained rapid traction in software engineering communities and helped introduce Anthropic’s models to a professional audience at scale. Amodei noted that software engineers tend to be among the earliest adopters of new technology, calling their embrace of AI a preview of broader economic transformation ahead.

Anthropic is also navigating a dispute with the U.S. government after the Pentagon designated the company a supply chain risk in March, effectively barring it from military contracts. That legal fight is ongoing.

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