Inside AMD and Anthropic’s ‘chips for shares’ deal

Details about Anthropic’s relationship with AMD have raised concerns after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that large cloud computing companies are limiting how much computing power Anthropic can use for AI.

One way the company behind Claude has worked around these limits is by agreeing to buy billions of dollars’ worth of AI computing services from AMD. In return, AMD has agreed to buy billions of dollars’ worth of Anthropic shares.

Anthropic’s plans for its initial public offering (IPO), which is its first sale of shares to the public, include details of this arrangement. The prospectus, a document explaining the planned offering to investors, shows that AMD has promised to spend up to $5 billion buying Anthropic shares. In the same filing, Anthropic agrees to buy more than $20 billion in AI computing services from AMD.

Companies that provide services usually get paid by their customers. They do not normally put that money back into their customers by buying shares in them. Even so, AMD described the arrangement as a “strategic partnership” designed to secure a major customer.

A skeptic might describe the two deals differently: AMD is effectively giving Anthropic a discount by buying shares in the company.

The unusual deal covers up to two gigawatts of AMD’s Instinct MI450 chips, with deliveries starting in the first half of 2027. “We are thrilled to deepen our partnership with Anthropic,” AMD’s CEO said.

That was one way to describe a promise to invest $5 billion back into a company that is also AMD’s customer.

Anthropic commits $20B as AMD commits $5B back

News of AMD’s original $5 billion “strategic partnership” came out in July, months before Anthropic’s IPO prospectus became public in September. The prospectus revealed that Anthropic had agreed to buy more than $20 billion in AI computing capacity from AMD.

AMD’s latest quarterly report states that the company has “investment commitments of up to $5.0 billion, subject to certain contingencies, which are expected to be made through fiscal year 2028.”

Notably, the report did not name Anthropic, even though the $5 billion figure exactly matches AMD’s promise to invest in the AI company.

“Access to compute is central to keeping Claude at the frontier and meeting demand from our customers,” Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown said in July.

Anthropic lost money at a very high rate in 2025. Its operating loss was more than $8 billion, while its revenue was only $4.6 billion. AMD’s investment will certainly help support a high valuation for Anthropic despite these losses.