Why Is Anthropic's $80.7 Billion Loss the Wrong Number?

Josh Brown says Anthropic's $80.7 billion headline loss is the wrong figure to fixate on. It comes from how Anthropic must report the financing of expenses, and it includes a $9 billion compute figure. He calls the accounting stupid. Money managers in New York focus on the operating loss: $693 million, down from $2.1 billion a year earlier.

Warren Buffett spent decades telling investors to focus on book value and said his job as chairman was to grow nominal book value per share. About eight or nine years ago he told them to throw the metric out, calling it the stupidest thing because of new accounting rules. When Berkshire Hathaway invests in plants and equipment or acquires something and the value drops, the company has to write the asset down, which hits book value. When the value later rises, the rules do not allow a write-up. Book value became almost nonsensical, so he shifted toward cash flow.

A bad Anthropic number should not be ignored just to stay constructive. The most bombastically negative figures are the ones that land on the news, and people react to headlines. The operating loss is the more important number.