After reading the prospectus, I finally understand why Anthropic no longer cares about its users.
The big one has finally arrived. On October 26, Anthropic publicly filed its S‑1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, preparing to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol ANT. Media reports suggest the company’s valuation is being discussed in a range of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, though the proposed offering price range remains undisclosed. Within 24 hours, this more than 300-page prospectus had already been scrutinized inside and outside the tech and finance communities, with everyone focusing on the most eye‑catching figures: revenue of $16.286 billion in the first half of 2026, compared to just $1.163 billion in the same period last year; operating profit of $974 million in the second quarter, marking the company’s first-ever quarterly operating profit; and a net loss of $80.7 billion, largely driven by $72.388 billion in changes to the fair value of convertible bonds, derivative liabilities, and SAFE notes—non‑cash accounting expenses. Yet beyond these Wall Street narratives, domestic developers and everyday users experience something quite different. In the eyes of mainland Chinese users, Claude is arguably the AI product currently facing the most account bans, the strictest risk controls, and the most frustrating user experience. Why does a company that has built a state‑of‑the‑art large model consistently appear so indifferent when dealing with ordinary individual users? After poring over the financial footnotes and risk disclosures in the prospectus, the answer is actually right there in the numbers. In Anthropic’s business landscape, personal users contribute only a very small share of its revenue. 01 Less Than 20% from Individual Users To understand who a company truly prioritizes, the simplest approach is to examine its revenue breakdown. In Note 2 of the financial statements attached to the prospectus, Anthropic splits its revenue into two main categories: usage‑based revenue and subscription revenue. The contrast is stark: for the full year 2025, usage‑based revenue totaled $3.796 billion, while subscription revenue was just $789 million—roughly an 83% to 17% split. By the first half of 2026, usage‑based revenue surged to $13.064 billion, with subscription revenue at $3.222 billion, still leaving usage‑based revenue accounting for about 80% and subscriptions making up roughly 20%. Even more telling details lie hidden within the composition of subscription revenue. Of that 20%, there are both individual users’ Cl