Those growth stats for Claude Code are pretty wild:
> Claude Code was made available to the general public in May 2025. Today, Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has grown to over $2.5 billion; this figure has more than doubled since the beginning of 2026. The number of weekly active Claude Code users has also doubled since January 1 [six weeks ago].
Doubling both annual run-rate revenue and weekly active users in the first six weeks of this year!
A disclaimer should be added about the heavy startup accounting used. Standard accounting revenue uses the past year revenue. Recurring revenue, used aggressively by startups, is projected future year revenue based on loosely defined contracts like subscriptions. Critically it is often extrapolated on a very short timeframe, like last month, because it gives a better growth figure. Run rate revenue is even more aggressive, it includes one time fees, contracts and other non recurring fees. They have not made that much, nor are they conservatively projected to make that much. It's a very vague measure.
It can mean many things, but clearly cannot be mean what revenue is going to be in the future. If Claude doubles revenue every six weeks, by the end of this year they would have a higher revenue than every FAANG company combined (about one trillion).
No doubt it's astounding, and I have no experience underwriting these kinds of scale of investments...
...but if I were a recent employee diluted as part of this raise (even with the massive uplift in revenue) I'd be very skeptical about an sort of financial outcome for myself.
> Claude Code was made available to the general public in May 2025. Today, Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has grown to over $2.5 billion; this figure has more than doubled since the beginning of 2026. The number of weekly active Claude Code users has also doubled since January 1 [six weeks ago].
Doubling both annual run-rate revenue and weekly active users in the first six weeks of this year!