Could Anthropic's Compute Spend Outpace Its Revenue Growth?

Anthropic, one of the world's fastest-growing AI companies, is expected to go public by the end of 2026. According to the latest leaked information from its confidential S-1 filing, it earned $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, compared with $4.6 billion for all of 2025. Reports say it earned another $16.8 billion in the third quarter of 2026. This brings its total revenue for the first nine months of the year to an impressive $33.1 billion.

But Anthropic also reported a huge net loss of $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with $42 billion in all of 2025. Most of this loss ($72 billion) came from accounting charges that did not involve actual cash payments. However, the company also spent heavily on computing power. These costs rose from $7.3 billion in 2025 to nearly $9 billion in the first half of 2026. So far, spending on computing power has not grown faster than revenue. But could these costs soar in the future and leave the company with much less profit from each dollar it earns?

Who is Anthropic paying for its computing power?

Anthropic's Claude models, especially Sonnet and Opus, are widely seen as some of the best AI tools for writing and automatically completing complex computer code. However, Anthropic did not build its own data centers or fiber networks to run these AI models.

Instead, Anthropic signed long-term cloud computing contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars with Amazon (AMZN -3.91%) Web Services (AWS), Alphabet (GOOG -2.23%) (GOOGL -2.11%) Google Cloud, Microsoft (MSFT -1.64%) Azure, and other cloud providers. These contracts, which mostly cannot be canceled, help ensure Anthropic has access to the computing power it needs.

Anthropic's spending on computing power probably will not grow faster than its revenue as long as the generative AI market remains strong. But if spending slows during a recession, Anthropic's huge cloud commitments, which cannot be canceled and total at least $518 billion over the next decade, could cause its costs to grow faster than its revenue. Competition from other AI models could also push down the amount Anthropic can charge for each token, a unit of text or data processed by an AI model, and make it harder for the company to keep its prices high.

What should investors pay attention to?

Anthropic says it has been profitable for two quarters in a row based on adjusted figures. However, these figures may give a misleading picture because they leave out research and development (R&D) costs, stock-based compensation, and other cloud obligations that do not appear on its balance sheet.

Anthropic also counts the full amount its business customers spend on cloud platforms as revenue. But it records the share kept by its cloud partners, which is 25% to 30%, as an operating expense. This unusual accounting method makes its reported revenue look larger compared with the total cost of running its AI services.

Even though Anthropic is growing quickly and has strong gross profit margins, it is still far from making a profit under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the standard rules companies use to report their finances. If it cannot reduce its losses before the AI market slows down, it may find it difficult to maintain its high company valuation.