Anthropic vs Scale AI: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
Anthropic reported $65B of revenue in FY2026 and — of net income. Scale AI reported $870M of revenue in FY2024 and — of net income.
Latest financial snapshot
Financial summary
Anthropic
Anthropic's draft IPO prospectus, described by Reuters on September 28, 2026, shows 2025 revenue of $4.59 billion against $386 million in 2024, an operating loss of $8.06 billion (from $2.98 billion) and a GAAP net loss of $41.97 billion (from $8.31 billion). About $34 billion of that loss was a non-cash charge tied to convertible financing from Google and Amazon rather than cash burn. Operating expenses reached $12.65 billion, including $7.33 billion of compute and infrastructure, and the company ended 2025 with $20.28 billion of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. Growth since then has outpaced the annual accounts: run-rate revenue was $14 billion in February 2026, crossed $47 billion in May, reached about $65 billion in July, and second-quarter revenue of $11.5 billion came with the first positive adjusted operating income. Funding followed the same curve, from a $13 billion Series F at a $183 billion valuation in September 2025 to a $30 billion Series G at $380 billion in February 2026 and a $65 billion Series H at $965 billion in May 2026.
Scale AI
Scale is private and does not publish audited results. Bloomberg reported about $870 million of revenue in 2024 and a target near $2 billion for 2025 before the Meta deal. After OpenAI and Google pulled back, that target looked out of reach, but CEO Jason Droege wrote in early 2026 that 2025 was Scale's biggest revenue year, with more than $1 billion in new business and nearly half of bookings in Q4. The company valued itself at more than $29 billion in the June 2025 Meta transaction, up from $13.8 billion in its May 2024 Series F. Net income has not been disclosed, though Scale says the data business is now profitable.
Revenue and profit by year
Anthropic
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | $65B | — | 0.0% | +1316.1% | Source |
| FY2025 | $4.6B | -$42B | -914.4% | +1089.1% | Source |
| FY2024 | $386M | -$8.3B | -2152.8% | — | Source |
Scale AI
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | $870M | — | 0.0% | — | Source |
Where the revenue comes from
Anthropic
- Developer and enterprise API consumption
Token-billed access to the Claude models through the Claude Developer Platform, with prompt caching priced at $0.20 per million tokens on Claude Opus 5.5 to make long agent loops affordable. Anthropic does not publish a segment split; the two largest customers each accounted for about 12 percent of 2025 revenue.
- Agent products
Claude Code and Cowork are sold to individuals, teams and enterprises. Claude Code passed $1 billion of run-rate revenue in December 2025 and $2.5 billion by February 2026, when enterprises accounted for more than half of its revenue.
- Seat subscriptions
Claude Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans for individuals and organizations, including HIPAA-eligible enterprise deployments since January 2026.
- Cloud marketplace resale
Claude is sold through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI and Microsoft Azure Foundry, which lets customers spend committed cloud budget on Claude.
Scale AI
- Data business
Not disclosed
Training data, RL environments, robotics data and evaluations for AI labs and large technology companies; profitable since the second half of 2025, per the company.
- Applications: enterprise
Not disclosed
Generative AI applications for companies such as Mayo Clinic, BP and Allianz.
- Applications: public sector
Not disclosed
AI programs for the U.S. Department of War and international governments including Qatar, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Business model and strategy
Anthropic
How it makes money
Anthropic charges for Claude in four ways. Developers and enterprises pay per million tokens on the Claude API, where cache reads cost far less than fresh input ($0.20 per million against $4 on Claude Opus 5.5). Individuals and teams pay subscriptions across Claude Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans.
Growth strategy
Growth runs through three channels. First, agent products: Claude Code went from internal experiment to general availability in May 2025 and over $2.5 billion of run-rate revenue by February 2026, and Cowork extended the same engine to non-technical work in January 2026. Second, cloud co-selling, with Claude the only frontier model on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI and Microsoft Azure Foundry.
Competitive advantage
Anthropic leads on agentic coding and long-horizon tasks. Claude Opus 5.5, released September 22, 2026, tops Anthropic's published benchmark table on SWE-bench Pro (89.9 percent) and Terminal-Bench 4.0 (66.4 percent) while costing $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, roughly 40 percent less to run than Opus 5.
Scale AI
How it makes money
Scale AI earns money in two ways. Its data business charges AI labs and large technology companies for training data, reinforcement learning environments and model evaluations, produced by software pipelines plus a paid contributor network run through Outlier and Remotasks; the company says it has paid contributors more than $1 billion over ten years.
Growth strategy
Scale's 2026 plan, as described by its leadership, is to move technical capabilities from the data business into applications faster, invest in a unified AI-native platform for enterprise and government customers, and expand abroad. It opened or grew offices in New York, London, Washington, D.C., Doha, St.
Competitive advantage
Scale's advantages are scale, track record and government access. It has applied what it calls 15 billion human decisions to train leading models across 150 languages and locales, it runs SEAL benchmarks such as Humanity's Last Exam and SWE-Bench Pro that labs cite at launch, and it holds U.S.
Questions about Anthropic vs Scale AI
Which company has higher revenue — Anthropic PBC or Scale AI, Inc.?
Anthropic PBC reported $65.0B (FY2026), while Scale AI, Inc. reported $870.0M (FY2024). By last reported revenue, Anthropic PBC is the larger business, with Scale AI, Inc. reporting a smaller revenue base. Note: these are from different fiscal years and are not a direct like-for-like comparison.
Which is more financially efficient — Anthropic PBC or Scale AI, Inc.?
Anthropic PBC generates $26.00M / employee in revenue per employee, while Scale AI, Inc. generates $725k / employee. Anthropic PBC shows higher revenue efficiency per headcount, though this reflects business model differences — capital-light software companies routinely outperform labour-intensive manufacturers on this metric.
How do Anthropic PBC and Scale AI, Inc. make money?
Anthropic PBC and Scale AI, Inc. generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. Anthropic PBC: Anthropic charges for Claude in four ways. Scale AI, Inc.: Scale AI earns money in two ways.
Is Anthropic PBC bigger than Scale AI, Inc.?
By last reported revenue, Anthropic PBC ($65.0B (FY2026)) is the larger company compared to Scale AI, Inc. ($870.0M (FY2024)). Revenue scale is one dimension of size — market capitalisation, employee count, and geographic reach are also relevant depending on the context.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Anthropic vs Scale AI overview