Why Did Anthropic's Third Quarter Slow Down?

Joey Brookhart says Anthropic's third quarter slowed because Meta, probably more than 10% of revenue, cut Claude Code seats from 60,000 to 30,000, and because Anthropic cracked down on customers distilling its models. The token volume did not vanish. It moved to Meta's internal models. Distillation had been about 5% of revenue, and the S-1 puts activity against the terms of service at 5% to 7% of revenue. Net new annual recurring revenue of $10 billion a month in the second quarter fell to $4 billion in the third. After Opus 5.5 in October, the pace looks closer to 8% to 10% in the fourth quarter.

The roadshow also has to explain newer work, including vulnerability scanning for existing customers, while patching continues until a fuller cybersecurity product is out. The harder balance is the guide. Nilay Patel says it is difficult to keep near-term numbers low enough for a beat when the risk factors say Anthropic could pose an existential risk to all of humanity, and when the longer story is still AGI and replacing jobs. The fourth-quarter and 2027 targets have to sit next to that claim.