Samsung Makes Billions in Profit. Why Is Anthropic Worth Twice as Much?

Samsung is making an estimated $80.17 billion in operating profit in one quarter. Anthropic reported $16.8 billion in quarterly revenue. Yet investors have discussed valuing Anthropic at $2 trillion, twice Samsung’s roughly $1 trillion market value.

Why would investors pay twice as much for a company generating a fraction of the revenue, when Samsung is already making enormous profits?

The answer is that investors expect Samsung’s current profits to fall, while they expect Anthropic’s business to keep growing.

Samsung’s earnings are benefiting from a shortage of advanced memory chips used in AI servers. When supply is tight, prices rise and chipmakers earn more. But shortages do not last forever. As competitors expand production and supply catches up, memory prices and profit margins can fall. Investors therefore cannot assume Samsung will keep earning $80 billion every quarter.

Anthropic is being valued on a different assumption: that businesses will spend far more on AI in the years ahead, and that its Claude models will capture a large share of that spending.

But there is a problem with that bet.

On October 15, Reuters reported that some Anthropic investors were discussing a valuation closer to $1.5 trillion, rather than $2 trillion, as quarterly revenue growth slowed to 45% from 145% in the previous quarter.

There is another warning sign. Reuters Breakingviews reported that Anthropic had cut its price per token by 68% since 2025. Token consumption rose 90% between July and September, but revenue rose only 19% over that period.

In plain English, customers are using much more AI, but the company is getting less money for each unit of usage. Anthropic needs that growth in usage to continue accelerating enough to offset falling prices, while also paying for the computing power needed to run its models.

That is the real difference between these valuations. Samsung’s profits could shrink if memory prices fall. Anthropic’s valuation could shrink if its growing customer usage fails to translate into enough revenue and profit.

At $2 trillion, Anthropic would be valued at nearly 30 times its third-quarter revenue annualized. That price assumes years of growth that have yet to happen. Samsung, meanwhile, is being judged partly on the possibility that today’s extraordinary profits will not last.

Investors are effectively betting that Samsung’s earnings will fall while Anthropic’s business will become vastly more valuable.

The risk is that both assumptions could be wrong in opposite directions. Samsung’s profits might remain elevated longer than expected, while Anthropic’s falling prices and slower growth could make its valuation harder to justify.

Samsung has already demonstrated that AI demand can generate enormous profits. Anthropic still has to prove how much of the AI economy it can turn into lasting profit.

That is why the valuation gap matters: Samsung is being priced on how long its profits last. Anthropic is being priced on how much future profit investors believe it can eventually make.

Not financial advice