SecondSource estimate: a unit of inference compute earns Anthropic about one-sixth as much from subscribers as from API and enterprise customers

How it was calculated

SemiAnalysis, a research firm, estimated on October 5, 2026 that monthly subscriptions bring in only about 10% of revenue at Anthropic, the developer of the Claude models, but may use more than 40% of its inference compute (the computing used when models respond to users); SecondSource uses the 40% floor and assumes that the remaining 60% of compute all serves API customers, who call the models directly from their own software and pay by usage, and enterprise customers, and that this compute earns the remaining 90% of revenue. Setting the company-wide average revenue per unit of compute at 1, subscriptions earn 10% ÷ 40% = 0.25 and API and enterprise customers earn 90% ÷ 60% = 1.5, a ratio of about one-sixth.

Limitation

Both shares are rough estimates from a single source, SemiAnalysis; the original puts the compute share at over 40%, and if it is higher, or if part of the remaining compute earns no revenue (free use, for example), the gap is wider than sixfold, and the comparison is of revenue, not profit.

Sources

• SemiAnalysis (Oct 5, 2026): “Anthropic Subscriptions Offer 5x+ More Value Than OpenAI”; the two shares come from its rough estimate for Anthropic
• SecondSource deep dive #39: the subsidy in AI coding subscriptions looks mostly like a compute bill