GoKawiilEd Zitron just published two pieces on Where’s Ed:
Together, one-two, the combination lands a clean hit on Anthropic’s hallucinations in financial storytelling. The math is simple enough, so it can’t be denied. Let me show you how.
What Anthropic Told the Court
Anthropic’s Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao filed an affidavit on March 9, meaning he swore it was true, in their lawsuit against the Department of Defense. It stated that Anthropic’s total revenue “to date” was “exceeding $5 billion.” That’s all the money Anthropic has ever made, from its founding day through March 9, 2026.
What Anthropic Told Everyone Else
Throughout 2025 and into 2026, Anthropic repeatedly announced its “annualized revenue”, which doesn’t match the affidavit.
Say you run a lemonade stand. In July, you sell $10 worth of lemonade. Someone asks how your business is doing. Instead of saying “I made ten dollars, that is true,” you say: “I have a $120-a-year pace no doubt!” That’s an annualized revenue stand. You take one month of actual money for lemons, multiply it by twelve hallucinated months, and report the biggest number you can.
Here are the annualized revenue figures Zitron compiled from Anthropic’s own announcements and press coverage, with sources:
Date Annualized Revenue Implied Monthly Revenue January 2025 $1 billion $83 million March 11, 2025 $1.4 billion $117 million March 30, 2025 $2 billion $167 million May 30, 2025 $3 billion $250 million July 1, 2025 $4 billion $333 million July 31, 2025 $5 billion $417 million October 2025 $7 billion $583 million December 2025 $9 billion $750 million February 12, 2026 $14 billion $1.17 billion March 3, 2026 $19 billion $1.58 billion
The right column is the simple math as a story. If annualized revenue means “this month times twelve,” then dividing each month’s hallucination by twelve gives you what they actually made each month.
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