# Anthropic pairs high inference margins with low acquisition costs

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/anthropic-pairs-high-inference-margins-with-low-acquisition/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Dylan Patel](https://realalpha.app/people/dylan-patel/) · Founder & CEO, SemiAnalysis · Founded SemiAnalysis in 2020, a research firm tracking the chip supply chain and AI infrastructure buildout.
- Host: [Alex Kantrowitz](https://realalpha.app/people/alex-kantrowitz/) · Founder, Big Technology · Former BuzzFeed News senior tech reporter and author of Always Day One.
- Show: Big Technology Podcast
- Episode: [Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let’s Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/), Oct 9, 2026
- Moment: 29:20 to 32:59 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/anthropic-pairs-high-inference-margins-with-low-acquisition/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1760

## Quote

> “And Anthropic has near no customer acquisition cost, right? Now, obviously, they have a humongous R&D spend, but their R&D spend has **grown slower than their revenue**.”
> — [Dylan Patel](https://realalpha.app/people/dylan-patel/) at [30:33](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1833) · Big Technology Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Anthropic's inference gross margins are around 75%.
2. Dylan says customer acquisition costs are near zero.
3. R&D spending has grown more slowly than revenue.

## About this segment

Dylan Patel says Anthropic's inference gross margins are about 75%, with near-zero customer acquisition costs and R&D growing slower than revenue. He argues that makes AI labs unusually scalable.

From “Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let’s Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos”, Oct 9, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[29:25](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1765) company like anthropic is a low margin business or at least much less than uh than software but that doesn't actually seem to be the case and you guys have run the numbers i would say like if you look at like salesforce which is probably like one of the greatest sas companies out there um you know i mean i think like at least like consistently grown to become one of the biggest sas companies um their gross margins are like 75 percent and anthropic on their inference is doing 75 gross margins a little bit higher even um you know especially on the frontier model so it's sort of like well and it took it took salesforce quite some time to get there right they were not at 75 when they ipo'd um you know they they took quite a bit of time actually they were but then they like you know in the mid in the late 2000s like they were you know i think like it took they were

[30:15](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1815) like not quite there it took you know anthropic quite a bit less time to get to that strong levels of gross margin um and if you look at many other sas companies they're not even that high um and then the other thing is like their customer acquisition cost is insane right if you look at Like a SaaS company, it's like, you know, fine, my COGS is really low, but then my customer acquisition cost can be as high as like 30%.

[30:39](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1839) And Anthropic has near no customer acquisition cost, right? Now, obviously, they have a humongous R&D spend, but their R&D spend has grown slower than their revenue. And so now they've reached profitability. And there's no reason why that trend doesn't continue, right? And they continue to grow more profitable. so at least Operating margin wise. And then like scalability is the other thing, right? Like the beautiful thing about a lot of SaaS companies, even if your customer acquisition cost is so high, you know, as long as your margins are high enough to pay for initially, eventually you don't have to reacquire that customer. Now you've got this super profitable business.

[31:14](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1874) but with like the ai labs their business seems somewhat sticky yes there's all this like messaging of like oh you know metas cutting spend or microsoft cutting spend or what have you but ultimately the revenue has only been a straight line up on the chart and almost every customer has only grown on revenue for them and uh switching cost even when you know some other chinese model comes out or okay comes out with a better model doesn't really shift the spend share that much um for existing customers um you end up with like this like pretty sticky customer potentially who is growing revenue at some pace and there's no customer acquisition cost and the margins are high so it's arguably a better business than software is is an ai lab if you but how much is the risk the fact that like they're this pacing the frontier

[32:01](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1921) um movement movement is coming out i think that's just signaling i think it's complete talk about that you don't think that's gonna that's true at all um i think pacing the frontier is a responsible thing to do if you believe that we could kill ourselves um i don't necessarily think that um they will pace the frontier too much though i think like there's there's like very little pacing they can do given the race that they're in um and people have made skits about this but like you know you know dario can't slow down because he doesn't trust sam and sam's not going to slow down and sam can't slow down much because same with dario obviously they're going to slow down a little bit when they have these massive security incidents um and neither of them can slow down because china is not too far behind so it's like sort of like very difficult

[32:50](https://realalpha.app/v/LwMtHI7BHWI/?t=1970) that's reassuring all right um look we're going to take a quick break and then when we come back