Anthropic’s IPO Filing Reveals The Scale Of Its AI Infrastructure Spending
By Giacomo Tognini,
Senior Editor.
Anthropic's paperwork for its planned stock market debut, filed on Monday, revealed how much the company plans to spend on AI chips and data centers. The fast-growing company has already spent more than $19 billion on AI infrastructure since it was founded in 2021. It has also signed contracts worth more than half a trillion dollars for equipment and services over the next 20 years.
These deals include agreements with major cloud computing companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as chipmakers AMD, Broadcom and Nvidia. Anthropic has also made computing deals with Elon Musk's SpaceX and several companies known as neoclouds, along with data center operators. These include CoreWeave, which provides computing services; Google-backed Fluidstack; Nvidia-backed Lambda; and Nscale. Many of these deals were already public, but their total value had not been revealed until now.
According to the filing, Anthropic had agreed to spend about $587 billion on chips and data centers through 2045 as of June. Over the next four months, the company behind Claude signed another $266 billion in new or updated agreements. It also expects to buy $20 billion worth of computing capacity from AMD and spend another $125 billion to $150 billion on chips designed by Google. This means Anthropic's total spending commitments could reach about $1 trillion through 2045. That is around 3% of the $31.6 trillion that consulting firm PwC estimates will be spent on building AI infrastructure worldwide by 2050. Anthropic's biggest competitor, OpenAI, is reportedly planning to spend $750 billion on computing power through 2030.
This is a huge increase compared with what Anthropic has spent so far. From January 2023 through June 2026, the company spent $19.2 billion on AI computing and infrastructure. This included data centers, chips, equipment and software used to run these systems. During the same period, the company earned $21.3 billion in revenue. Of that amount, $16.3 billion came in during just the first six months of 2026. That was a 1,300% increase from the same period a year earlier, while spending on computing and infrastructure rose by 283%.
Anthropic can keep building data centers and buying chips only if its revenue continues to grow fast enough. About 80% of its revenue in the first half of the year came from customers who pay based on how much they use its services. The rest came from subscriptions.
With OpenAI and many cheaper AI models whose underlying model weights are openly available competing for customers, Anthropic may find it harder to keep growing so quickly. “Their fortunes hinge on whether they can charge these premium prices for their latest model,” says Columbia Business School economist Stijn van Nieuwerburgh. “There’s always going to be a next model from their competitor that does a little better. That’s going to be a much more volatile business.”
Another concern is that some of Anthropic's biggest contracts are with companies that have also invested in Anthropic. “Circular financing is becoming more and more prominent,” says Chan Ahn, CEO and founder of private markets platform Tessera PE. “You have a lot of stakes that are intertwined. The probability of the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI going bust is very small, but everything hinges on the fact that they continue growing.”
Anthropic has a $114.5 billion contract with Google for cloud computing and a $110 billion cloud computing contract with Amazon. It also has a $45 billion contract with Microsoft for computing power and access to Nvidia systems. All three companies own stakes in Anthropic, although none is listed in the ownership table in its S-1 filing.
Anthropic's biggest contract is a $161 billion agreement with Broadcom for chips and infrastructure. Broadcom also holds $42 billion in convertible notes, which can be exchanged for Anthropic shares. According to the S-1 filing, Anthropic expects to spend more than $20 billion on AMD chips. In July, AMD agreed to buy up to $5 billion worth of Anthropic common stock. Anthropic also buys memory and storage products from Micron, Samsung and SK hynix. All three companies took part in Anthropic's Series H funding round in May, which valued Anthropic at $965 billion. The filing did not say exactly how much of Anthropic each company owns.
Another major deal is Anthropic's $120.5 billion agreement with SpaceX to access Nvidia GPU chips that SpaceX has stored up. Once SpaceX delivers all the promised computing capacity, which is expected in December, the deal will cost Anthropic $3.1 billion per month. The agreement is also expected to bring in a large amount of money for SpaceX. During the first three months of 2027, it would account for about 25% of SpaceX's expected revenue for that quarter. This means the financial success of the two companies is closely tied together.
Anthropic has listed many risks linked to its plans to build more infrastructure. These include power shortages, construction delays and growing public opposition to data centers, all of which could slow its expansion. Some agreements require Anthropic to pay for 20 years even if it does not use the computing capacity. They also allow yearly price increases and fuel costs to be passed on to Anthropic without a limit, leaving the company exposed to rising energy prices.
Anthropic may also have to pay for equipment before it can use it. Under its Broadcom leases, rent payments can start even when the data centers are not ready. Its agreements with Amazon, Google, AMD and Microsoft cover up to 13 gigawatts of data center capacity. That is enough electricity to power all of New York City, but much of this capacity has not yet been put in place. Most of Anthropic's data centers are in the United States, while other sites are being developed in Australia, Canada and Norway.
None of the nearly $1 trillion in leases and contracts appears on Anthropic's balance sheet yet. The company records these amounts as liabilities only when the leases begin. Anthropic reported $117 billion in liabilities, most of which came from convertible notes.
Anthropic's ability to keep expanding its data centers is especially important to its smaller suppliers, many of which do not have as many different sources of business as SpaceX. The companies most at risk are the so-called neoclouds. They buy large numbers of AI chips and rent them to companies such as Anthropic that need computing power.
Anthropic's filing shows how much these neocloud companies depend on its business. Nscale, a neocloud that rents out chips and is preparing for an IPO, depends on Anthropic for 43% of its total $103 billion in contracts. Nearly half of the computing capacity that TeraWulf, a publicly traded bitcoin mining company expanding into data centers, has agreed to lease is committed to Anthropic. About 25% of data center operator Hut 8's AI leases are also with Anthropic.
On Sunday, Elon Musk pointed out the difference between these companies and SpaceX: “SpaceX closed $40 billion of debt for GPUs, but we’re investment grade and have Starlink and launch revenue,” he wrote in a post on X. “That means the 200+ neoclouds are going to see guppy-level death and consolidation. Some will make it through, but not many.”
Shares in many neocloud companies have fallen in recent weeks as investors worry about the huge amounts of debt needed to build their data centers. CoreWeave has been hit especially hard. As of June, three customers accounted for 72% of its revenue. It is not clear how much of CoreWeave's business comes from Anthropic, but the two companies signed a multi-year agreement in April.
Investors will closely watch whether Anthropic can continue bringing in tens of billions of dollars in revenue each quarter. If its growth slows, it could hurt the company's IPO and cool enthusiasm across the technology industry. “Anthropic and OpenAI aren’t really profitable yet,” says Michael Cuggino, president of San Francisco-based mutual fund Permanent Portfolio Family of Funds. “If revenues start to be questioned and you don’t have the go-go growth, it’s not a great time to go public.”