There’s a flip side to Anthropic’s $80.7 billion net loss for the first half of this year. On the other side of the ledger, Amazon.com and Alphabet booked large paper gains on some of the same financing deals. This tees up a vexing question as Anthropic prepares for an initial public offering as soon as November: Should gains and losses like those count in the alternative earnings metrics widely touted by Wall Street stock analysts? At Amazon and Alphabet, the gains count. But at Anthropic, the corresponding losses don’t, or at least not in the company’s adjusted profit figures. Anthropic’s…

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