Anthropic Spends $2.7 Billion On Channel Partners Ahead Of IPO

Anthropic increased the fees it paid to channel partners by $2.7 billion in the first half of 2026, a rise of 2,540 percent, according to a regulatory filing the company made on Monday. Here is what you need to know.

Anthropic spent $2.7 billion on channel partners during the first six months of 2026, according to a regulatory filing made on Monday as the company prepared for its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO).

Anthropic's spending on sales, marketing, and partnerships rose by $3.2 billion, or 2,540 percent, in the first six months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.

In its S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Anthropic said, “The increase was primarily driven by a $2.7 billion increase in fees paid to channel partners, reflecting the growth of our business.”

Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco, reported total sales, marketing, and partnerships expenses of $3.17 billion for the six months ending June 30, 2026, according to the filing.

For the first six months of 2025, ending June 30, the company spent just $120 million in these areas.

[Related: Anthropic Invests $100M Into Frontier Deployed Engineer Residency]

Anthropic said another $273 million in spending during the first half of 2026 went toward marketing and advertising. This increase reflected higher media spending to support product launches.

Anthropic Expects Sales, Marketing, Partnerships Expenses ‘To Increase’

Anthropic said its sales, marketing, and partnerships expenses mainly include fees paid to channel partners, along with marketing and advertising costs such as media and public relations spending.

The nearly $3 billion increase in the first half of 2026 shows a huge rise in spending compared with the same period a year earlier. Anthropic says these costs will continue to grow.

Anthropic said, “We expect sales, marketing, and partnerships expenses to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to invest in activities to drive continued adoption and expanded usage of our models.”

The company also said, “We expect that [SMP] expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of revenue depending on the timing of and spend on marketing campaigns and changes in the terms of our channel partner distribution arrangements and the cost to deliver our intelligence service.”

Anthropic had not responded to CRN's request for more details about the $2.7 billion in channel partner spending by the time this article was prepared.

Sales, Marketing And Partnerships Expenses For 2025: $568 Million

For all of 2025, Anthropic spent $568 million on sales, marketing, and partnerships.

This was $525 million, or 1,221 percent, more than the company spent in 2024.

Anthropic explained the increase in its 2025 spending by saying, “The increase was primarily driven by a $341 million increase in fees paid to channel partners, reflecting the growth of our business.”

The company spent another $170 million on marketing and advertising to support product launches.

In 2024, Anthropic spent only $43 million in total on sales, marketing, and partnerships.

Anthropic Channel Partner CEO: ‘We’re Investing In Each Other’

Val Henderson, CEO of Caylent, a company that partners with Anthropic, is positive about the company's spending on its channel partners and their relationship.

Henderson said, “I actually do believe this partnership with Anthropic will get us to the next scale. We love working with Anthropic. … We’re investing in each other.”

Caylent is so committed to working with Anthropic that the Irvine, California-based solutions provider created a dedicated Anthropic Consulting and Engineering (ACE) organization to help drive sales.

Henderson said, “When we met with Anthropic earlier in the year, we had about 100 [Anthropic] certifications, and in that meeting, I said, ‘We want to continue to evolve and be the No. 1 Anthropic SI [system integrator] in the ecosystem.’”

After working more closely with Anthropic this year, Caylent now has more than 1,300 Anthropic certifications.

Henderson said, “So that's one thing that I think has changed, is the dynamic of the partnership.” She added that Caylent had also seen more customer introductions from Anthropic, which she described as incredible.

4,000 Organizations Received Certs Via Claude Certification Program

In its filing on Monday, Anthropic highlighted its partnerships with channel partners, especially global system integrators (GSIs) that have created dedicated teams and services focused on Anthropic's Claude products.

Anthropic said, “To accelerate the growth and capability of this ecosystem, in March 2026, we launched the Claude Partner Network, committing an initial $100 million in 2026 to fund partner training, technical certification, and joint market development with the firms that bring Claude into enterprise environments.”

As of September 30, 2026, the network included more than 150,000 professionals across more than 4,000 organizations who had earned certifications through the Claude Certification Program, according to Anthropic.

$3.17 Billion Doesn’t Include Cloud Provider Expenses

It is important to note that Anthropic's $3.17 billion in sales, marketing, and partnerships expenses for the first half of 2026 does not include its spending on cloud service provider (CSP) partners such as Amazon or Google.

Anthropic reported $8.95 billion in operating expenses for computing and infrastructure during the first half of 2026. That was a 283 percent increase compared with the same period a year earlier.

>Anthropic said, “The increase was driven by the delivery of committed compute throughout the first half of 2026 under our CSP arrangements. As our compute and infrastructure capacity grows, the associated compute and infrastructure expenses have increased accordingly.”

Anthropic said its computing and infrastructure operating costs mainly include fees paid to cloud service providers under agreements for planned and on-demand services. These costs cover storage, networking, connectivity, and related support. They also include infrastructure used to run customer workloads through partner channels, colocation facility costs, equipment leases, power costs committed for its data center operations, and third-party software used directly for computing operations.