Anthropic вышла на $47 млрд run rate — Menlo Ventures: такого роста не было 25 лет

Anthropic reached a $47 billion annual run rate by May 2026 — up from $9 billion in 2025. Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy called this jump a kind of growth he had never seen once in 25 years of investing.

How fast did Anthropic grow

Anthropic increased its annual revenue run rate from $9 billion in 2025 to $47 billion by May 2026 — more than fivefold in just a few months. Menlo Ventures led the company's $500 million Series D round and watched the business trajectory up close, with access to internal financials.

Run rate is an annualized revenue projection based on the current monthly or quarterly pace. The $47 billion figure means that if the company kept up May's pace, it would earn that much in a year. This isn't actual annual revenue, but an instant snapshot of the business's speed — yet it's exactly what shows how sharply Anthropic accelerated.

According to Murphy, the company started essentially pre-revenue and reached tens of billions of dollars in annual pace within just a few years. The main driver is corporate demand for Claude models and API integrations, though Menlo Ventures does not disclose the exact revenue breakdown.

• Run rate — $47 billion by May 2026
• For comparison — $9 billion in 2025
• Menlo Ventures led the $500 million Series D round
• Started from zero revenue (pre-revenue)
• Investor's assessment — 25 years of experience, no precedent

Why this surprised the investor

Matt Murphy said he had never seen dynamics like this in any of the previous technology waves. Neither the internet boom of the late 1990s, nor the mass shift to mobile devices, nor the first cloud upswing produced such a pace of revenue growth at a single company.

"I haven't seen growth like this in 25 years of investing — not in the internet wave, not in mobile, not in the first cloud boom," —

Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures, on the TechCrunch podcast.

Menlo Ventures is one of Anthropic's key investors: the fund led the $500 million Series D round. That's why Murphy's assessment rests on direct knowledge of the company's finances, not on outside analyst estimates. For a venture investor with a quarter-century of experience, that comparison is a strong statement: he places Anthropic above the most successful cases he has personally witnessed, including the standout stories of the internet and mobile eras.

What AI startup founders should do

According to Murphy, Anthropic's pace is raising the bar for the entire industry: what used to count as fast growth now looks modest next to AI companies. In the TechCrunch interview, he explains what AI startup founders now need to do differently to match the market's new speed.

The key shift is the speed of reaching revenue. Anthropic went from pre-revenue to a $47 billion run rate, and this example sets a benchmark for new teams: old assumptions about how many years a startup should take to grow into the billions no longer apply in the AI sector. By Murphy's logic, investors now judge teams by their ability to grow at this pace from the very first months.

What this means

Anthropic's growth to a $47 billion annual run rate shows that the AI sector is moving along a curve that didn't exist in previous technology cycles. For investors and founders, this is a new frame of reference where familiar growth benchmarks no longer apply, and the pace set by leaders like Anthropic is becoming the norm for the entire market.