Anthropic Leasing Data Centers To Limit Third-Party Reliance Ahead Of IPO

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Anthropic is moving away from relying on cloud service companies as middlemen. The company plans to lease large amounts of space in dedicated data centers as its need for computing power grows ahead of its expected initial public offering (IPO), when it could begin selling shares to the public.

The company revealed this change on Monday in its S-1 filing, a document companies submit to U.S. regulators before selling shares to the public. The filing, from the company that makes Claude, led to reports of a possible record-breaking IPO. It also revealed a major change in Anthropic's plans. Until now, the company has relied almost entirely on cloud providers such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft for its computing power.

Under a plan called Anthropic Direct, the company will use more data centers that it leases and controls. These facilities will make up a growing share of the $542 billion to $567 billion Anthropic plans to spend on computing infrastructure in the coming years.

The plan comes with major risks, but it will also quickly make Anthropic one of the biggest sources of demand for data center space in the digital infrastructure industry.

"As our need for computing power has grown, we have moved to a mixed approach. We still buy computing power as a cloud service, but we also buy special chips designed for AI directly. We then run this hardware in dedicated data centers that we lease and have others operate for us according to our needs," the company wrote in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Anthropic Direct does not mean the company will build its own data centers. Instead, Anthropic plans to work with outside companies that find sites and secure power, build facilities to meet its requirements, and manage them over time. Large technology companies, often called hyperscalers, commonly use this approach.

The plan is already moving forward. According to its SEC filing, Anthropic has recently signed purchase and lease agreements for Anthropic Direct.

This will be Anthropic's first major effort to lease data center space on a large scale, but the company has already played an important role in data center development deals. Last November, Anthropic announced a $50 billion investment in infrastructure. Under that plan, the cloud computing company Fluidstack would build data centers in Texas and New York to provide Anthropic with computing power. Anthropic Direct goes a step further by giving Anthropic more control over the physical facilities and equipment that support its artificial intelligence models.

Until now, Anthropic has bought almost all its computing power as a service from outside cloud providers. Most of this capacity has come from Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The company has also signed smaller deals with SpaceX and several specialized cloud providers, including Fluidstack and Lambda. Anthropic's S-1 filing gives a clearer picture of the size of these commitments: By the end of 2025, the company had signed computing agreements worth $417 billion with various providers.

However, Anthropic says that relying on cloud companies creates serious risks. In its filing, the company describes its relationships with major cloud providers as "multifaceted and complex." This is because many companies that supply its computing power are also competitors. They run their own AI research teams and develop products that compete with Claude. According to the filing, these providers could put their own computing needs first instead of meeting Anthropic's needs. They could also learn details about Anthropic's infrastructure and computing needs that might help them plan how to compete with the company.

Anthropic Direct would reduce some of this dependence, but it would also create new risks, according to the S-1 filing. Leasing and setting up data center infrastructure directly requires more money upfront, which could leave the company with less cash available for other needs. It would also expose Anthropic more directly to problems affecting the wider data center industry. These include project delays caused by local communities opposing developments, supply chain problems and power shortages.

"If we cannot successfully carry out our data center infrastructure plans, face major delays or costs that go beyond our budget, or find that the infrastructure we lease, use, or build no longer meets our changing needs, we may not get the expected benefits from these investments. This could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results," the filing says.