Amazon Stands to Gain Nearly $98 Billion From Anthropic's IPO

By Olivia Hart

Amazon values its convertible notes in Anthropic at $97.9 billion as of June 30, according to its own filings — a paper gain built on roughly $18 billion invested, and the single largest financial stake in the AI company's upcoming IPO.

The figure comes from Anthropic's S-1 filing and Amazon's quarterly report for the period ended June 30. Together they show a deal structure that concentrates the IPO's biggest spoils not in venture capital, but in one strategic partner that also sells Anthropic most of its computing power.

Where did the venture money end up?

Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, Sound Ventures and Spark Capital are all expected to return billions when Anthropic goes public. Yet none of them owns 5% of the company — the threshold for appearing in the principal stockholders' table of the S-1.

That absence is highly unusual. In a typical tech IPO, lead venture investors hold double-digit percentage stakes in the startups they backed. The reason here is scale: at Anthropic's $965 billion private valuation, a 1% stake is worth nearly $10 billion. Menlo's roughly $14 billion position — enormous by any venture standard — amounts to only about 1.5% of the company, according to recently reported Bloomberg figures.

Takeaway: the VCs will make billions in absolute terms, but the S-1 shows they are financial bystanders next to the tech giants.

How did Amazon build its position?

Amazon first backed Anthropic in 2023 with a commitment of up to $4 billion. It has poured in billions more since — roughly $8 billion into convertible notes from 2023 through 2025, plus $10 billion in nonvoting preferred stock in the second quarter, split as $5 billion into each of Anthropic's last two funding rounds.

The notes are the striking part. Rather than taking stock upfront, Amazon held debt that converts into shares upon an IPO or sale. The S-1 shows $6.2 billion in principal outstanding as of June 30 — Anthropic's entire debt load. As successive funding rounds pushed the valuation to $965 billion, the shares those notes convert into became far more valuable, and Amazon's own filings now value the holdings at $97.9 billion.

The accounting cut the other way for Anthropic. It recorded $72.4 billion in the first half of 2026 under "change in fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities, and SAFEs" on its income statement. The charge is non-cash — no money left the company — but it shows how much value the company has effectively ceded to noteholders.

Takeaway: a debt instrument became a $98 billion equity position without Amazon buying a single share at the top of the market.

Is there a limit on Amazon's ownership?

Yes, and it matters. Amazon's notes could convert into as many as 1.84 billion shares, per the S-1, but a cap restricts Amazon to 12% of Anthropic's "partially diluted" share count — a measure that includes shares not yet issued, such as stock options. Amazon can waive the cap. Notes that cannot convert will stay outstanding and convert in later quarters, subject to the same limit.

Takeaway: the 12% cap is the only structural brake on Amazon's stake, and Amazon holds the power to lift it.

What about Google and the cloud deals?

Google also stands to win twice — from the listing and from cloud revenue. Court filings reported by The New York Times showed Google held about 14% of Anthropic as of early last year, and it has invested more since, including $10 billion in April. PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes told TechCrunch he estimates the current stake at closer to 5.6%, likely diluted in subsequent massive funding rounds. Google has also secured at least $114 billion in cloud commitments from Anthropic through 2033.

Amazon's parallel commitment is larger still: Anthropic has committed to spend at least $110 billion on AWS over the next 10 years — an average of $11 billion a year flowing to a single shareholder.

Takeaway: the giants profit on both sides of the ledger, as investors and as suppliers.

What does the S-1 itself warn about?

Anthropic's own filing cautions that some of its cloud providers also build rival AI models and may not always want the same things Anthropic does. That is not boilerplate. The biggest winners of this IPO are the companies that backed a would-be rival early and now sell it much of the computing power it runs on — a dependency the S-1 itself flags, even as the dollar amounts suggest Anthropic had little choice.