Anthropic's lower-than-expected annual revenue triggers market sell-off? Pre-market trading sees general decline in the three major US stock indexes, storage, and optical communication sectors

BlockBeats News, August 18th. According to BIT (Bit.com) market data, the three major U.S. stock indexes fell in pre-market trading, with the Nasdaq down 0.32%, the S&P 500 down 0.52%, and the Dow down 0.51%; the storage and optical communication sectors saw a widespread decline:

SanDisk (SNDK) fell by 4.19%; Seagate Technology (STX) fell by 5.11%; Western Digital (WDC) fell by 5.23%; Micron Technology (MU) fell by 4.13%; SK Hynix (SKHY) fell by 4.39%.

Corning (GLW) fell by 4.55%; Coherent (COHR) fell by 5.76%; Marvell Technology (MRVL) fell by 5.30%; Lumentum Holdings (LITE) fell by 5.98%; Nokia (NOK) fell by 3.43%.

On the news front, Anthropic's annual revenue fell below market expectations, prompting the market to question the AI growth trajectory. Bloomberg previously reported that as of the end of July, Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate reached approximately $65 billion. Against a background of some third-party data and optimistic expectations in the AI community pointing to over $80 billion, $65 billion may indicate a slowdown in the growth trajectory.

The controversy stems from the ARR metric. ARR, or Annual Recurring Revenue, essentially annualizes the current revenue run rate and does not equate to audited full-year revenue. Data from Sacra shows that Anthropic's May annualized revenue was about $47 billion, rising to $65 billion in July, but it also warns that revenue from cloud channels such as AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc., may be recognized on a gross basis, making the revenue scale appear larger, and increasing market focus on gross margin and revenue quality.