Anthropic Tells Investors Its Quarterly Revenue Reached $16.8bn, AI Debt Fears Hit CoreWeave, and Microsoft Leaves Nscale's Essex Site
Title: Anthropic Tells Investors Its Quarterly Revenue Reached $16.8bn, AI Debt Fears Hit CoreWeave, and Microsoft Leaves Nscale's Essex Site
Date: 19 October 2026
Type: Blog
Author: SAASiQ (contact@saasiq.ai)
Word count: 1544 words
Reading time: 6 min
Published: 19-10-2026
Anthropic told prospective investors on 14 October that its third-quarter revenue was $16.8bn, the Financial Times reported. That is about 45 per cent more than in the second quarter. Some investors at the meeting discussed a listing valuation of about $1.5trn, Reuters reported, against the $2trn previously expected. CoreWeave's shares fell nearly 25 per cent in the week to 16 October as investors questioned how AI infrastructure companies will repay their debts. The Nasdaq Composite had its worst week since June. Microsoft has pulled out of Nscale's planned data centre at Loughton in Essex, the Telegraph reported on 18 October. TSMC and ASML both reported record quarters.
Anthropic's investor day
Anthropic met prospective investors at its San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday 14 October. The meeting was closed to the press. The Financial Times, citing an investor who attended, reported that third-quarter revenue was $16.8bn. Second-quarter revenue was $11.6bn and first-quarter revenue $4.7bn. Anthropic also said it was profitable on an adjusted basis in the third quarter. It has not said which costs that measure leaves out, and the FT's source did not say whether the revenue figure was gross or net.
Reuters reported on 15 October, citing four people familiar with the matter, that some investors were disappointed by the slower growth. Revenue had more than doubled between the first and second quarters. Three of the people said some attendees discussed a valuation of about $1.5trn. That is well below the roughly $2trn previously expected for the November share sale. Anthropic did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
None of these figures is in a public filing yet. Anthropic submitted its draft registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission confidentially on 1 June. Yahoo Finance reported on 13 October that no public version had appeared. Bloomberg reported on 2 October that the roadshow could start on 9 November, with trading before Thanksgiving on 26 November. SAASiQ reported on 5 October that a draft prospectus seen by Reuters showed a 2025 net loss of $42bn.
Inflation, borrowing costs and CoreWeave
US consumer price figures for September, published on 14 October, came in above forecasts. Prices rose 0.6 per cent in the month, after 0.4 per cent in August. Traders raised the odds of a Federal Reserve rate rise at its meeting on 27 and 28 October. Estimates of those odds varied from about a third to about a half, depending on the market. The Fed raised rates in September for the first time in more than three years.
CoreWeave, which rents out computing built on Nvidia chips, was at the centre of the selling. Its shares dropped about 15 per cent on 14 October. CNBC reported that the yield on its bonds due in 2032 briefly reached 15 per cent the same day. A yield at that level usually signals that investors see a real risk of default. S&P rates CoreWeave B+, below investment grade. The company is loss-making and carries about $50bn of debt, according to Reuters.
Mike Intrator, CoreWeave's chief executive, wrote in a memo seen by CNBC that building a new type of company includes periods when "the market misunderstands and acts irrationally". He said the company's backlog "more than supports all of our debt obligations". CoreWeave's bonds recovered on 15 October. Its shares then fell more than 11 per cent on Friday 16 October, Reuters reported, leaving them down nearly 25 per cent for the week.
The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.19 per cent on 16 October, to 26,128.13, according to Reuters. It was the index's worst week since June. The S&P 500 lost almost 2 per cent over the week. Broadcom also fell on Friday, and oil prices rose sharply the same day. CNN reported that Friday's fall also reflected doubts about whether Anthropic can keep its revenue growing. Both indices had closed at record highs ten days earlier.
Microsoft leaves Nscale's Essex site
Microsoft has pulled out of its agreement to be the anchor tenant at Nscale's data centre in Loughton, Essex, the Telegraph reported on Sunday 18 October. Reuters and Bloomberg followed the report. The site was due to hold about 23,000 Nvidia GB300 chips, with 50 megawatts of capacity at first and room for 90. The Telegraph did not give a reason for Microsoft's decision. It reported that grid officials had told Nscale they did not expect to supply power to the site until the 2030s.
Nscale said its relationship with Microsoft remains strong and that the grid problem does not affect its other contracts. It said it is still committed to Loughton and to the UK, and is looking at other sources of power for the site.
Nscale filed for a New York listing on 18 September, under the ticker NSCL. Bloomberg reported that it is seeking to raise up to $3bn. Its filing lists $103.4bn of contracts, about 85 per cent of them with Microsoft and Anthropic. Microsoft's statements of work run to about $43.8bn through December 2033. The Anthropic agreements are worth up to about $44.6bn, for 460 megawatts at a campus in West Virginia. The filing says Nscale has no assurance it will obtain the financing for them. Only $2.6bn of the contracts were producing revenue when it filed. Nscale reported a net loss of $1.02bn on revenue of $140.6m for the first half of 2026.
TSMC and ASML report record quarters
TSMC reported third-quarter revenue of $46.72bn on 15 October, above the top of its own forecast. That is about 41 per cent more than a year earlier, in US dollars. Net income was a record NT$763.06bn, up 68.7 per cent. High-performance computing, the category that includes AI accelerators, made up 68 per cent of revenue. Gross margin was 66.4 per cent, down 1.3 points on the quarter. TSMC put that down mainly to the cost of starting production at 2 nanometres.
TSMC expects fourth-quarter revenue of $52.3bn to $54.3bn. It now expects revenue for 2026 to grow by about 44 per cent in dollars, and kept its capital spending plan at $60bn to $64bn. Its shares slipped after the results, Investing.com reported. SAASiQ reported on 12 October that TSMC's September revenue was NT$511.9bn.
ASML, the Dutch maker of chipmaking machines, reported record third-quarter net sales of about €11.7bn on 14 October. Net profit was about €5bn and gross margin 57.5 per cent, up from 54 per cent in the second quarter. ASML raised its 2026 sales forecast to €44bn to €45bn. It said some customers want to place orders for 2029 and even 2030. It now expects the supply it has planned for 2027 and 2028 to fall short of demand. ASML is looking at ways to add capacity for 2028 beyond the 30 per cent increase it has already announced.
JPMorgan keeps outside AI agents out
JPMorgan Chase will not let outside AI agents act inside its customers' accounts, Jamie Dimon said on the bank's third-quarter results call on 13 October. "We're not going to allow just any... outside agent to come in inside the company, because it's just too risky for clients and for JPMorgan," he said, according to CNBC. He added: "You don't want rogue agents, and it could be thousands of them." Dimon said customers who authorise outside agents take on that risk themselves.
A bank spokesperson said outside agents cannot log in with customers' credentials, send money or pay bills. Some read-only access to balances is possible through data connectors. Jeremy Barnum, the chief financial officer, said the bank is piloting its own tool, Smart Cash. It predicts a customer's cash flow and moves money to earn more interest. JPMorgan's results fell short of analysts' forecasts, CNBC reported, while Goldman Sachs beat them on the strength of equities trading.
Deals and departures
Salesforce agreed on 12 October to buy Loops, an Israeli company whose software monitors business metrics and explains why they change. Loops will become part of Tableau. Salesforce gave no price, and Calcalist estimated it at about $30m. The deal is expected to close in early November.
Cohere signed a letter of intent on 15 October to buy AISLE, which uses AI to find and fix unknown software vulnerabilities, Reuters reported. Terms were not disclosed. AISLE says it has found more than 500 vulnerabilities that were given CVE numbers, across more than 100 codebases. Cohere plans a new unit, Cohere Cyber, to be led by AISLE's co-founder Ondrej Vlcek.
OpenAI is in early talks to buy Trail of Bits, a New York security firm, The Information reported on 13 October. The talks could still fall apart, and no price was reported. The two companies already run a bug-hunting programme together, called Patch the Planet, which started in June. Separately, Sachin Katti, OpenAI's vice president of compute strategy, said on 14 October that he is leaving. His last day is 15 November, and he will stay on as an adviser.
What happens next
In SAASiQ's view, organisations signing multi-year AI capacity contracts should ask their suppliers whether the power and the financing behind that capacity are already secured.
The Federal Reserve meets on 27 and 28 October. Samsung publishes its divisional results on 29 October. Anthropic's roadshow could begin on 9 November, and Salesforce expects to complete the Loops deal in early November.
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