The long-running race of large-scale artificial intelligence models, which have consumed massive funds, has finally seen a glimmer of profitability. According to a recent report by the UK's Financial Times, the AI startup Anthropic is expected to achieve its first profitable quarter in the second quarter of 2026. This key breakthrough means that it has already taken a lead over core competitors such as OpenAI and xAI in terms of commercialization and monetization.

Revenue Doubles and Turns Profitable

According to insiders, this San Francisco-based AI giant is expected to record revenue of $10.9 billion in the second quarter of 2026. Compared to $4.8 billion in the first quarter of this year, this figure represents a doubling, and the quarter is expected to bring the company about $559 million in operating profit.

In contrast, the financial pressure of the other two major AI giants remains significant. Although OpenAI has annualized revenue of hundreds of billions of dollars, due to the huge consumption of computing power expansion and scaling operations, the company is expected to turn profitable only by 2030. Meanwhile, xAI, which has merged with SpaceX, currently has accumulated operating losses of up to $6.4 billion in its AI business.

High Bills Test Long-Term Stability

However, industry analysts point out that Anthropic's first profit may not be able to remain stable in the long term. With the continued surge in global demand for large model inference, the company will still need to purchase larger computing resources from computing power suppliers in the future.

Previously submitted prospectus documents from SpaceX also confirm this. Data shows that Anthropic has already signed a $15 billion annual computing power procurement agreement. In addition, it has also entered into deeper long-term collaborations with cloud giants such as Google and Amazon, with total technology expenditures expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years.