Anthropic May Spend $750 Billion on Cloud as Its Suppliers Turn Rivals

Anthropic believes it could spend more than $750 billion on cloud contracts, some of them still under negotiation, according to an S-1 filing leaked to The Wall Street Journal. That figure, extraordinary even by AI-industry standards, equals roughly three times the annual revenue of Amazon's entire AWS division at its current scale — and it may still not buy the company what it needs.

The filing, reported by the WSJ, describes a structural problem rather than a procurement hiccup. Anthropic is struggling to secure enough cloud capacity from AWS, Google and Microsoft, because those three hyperscalers increasingly view the Claude-maker as a competitor rather than a customer. The company that relies on Big Tech's data centers is building products that compete with Big Tech's own AI offerings.

By Olivia Hart

How bad is Anthropic's financial position?

The leaked filing adds detail to numbers that Reuters and the Financial Times first reported in late September. Anthropic posted an $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of the year. Revenue for the same period was $16.3 billion — meaning the company lost roughly five dollars for every dollar it took in.

Customer concentration compounds the risk. Only two customers accounted for about a fifth of Anthropic's sales, according to the WSJ report. If either contract lapses or gets repriced, the revenue base narrows sharply.

The takeaway: Anthropic is burning cash at a rate that dwarfs its income, and a large share of that income rests on two buyers.

Why is $750 billion in cloud spend not enough?

Even the planned outlay leaves gaps. Anthropic is leasing its own data centers and working with third-party data center operators, the filing shows. But the company worries those operators have a "limited operating history," which could make them less reliable than the hyperscalers.

That concern cuts both ways. The hyperscalers are dependable but conflicted; the independents are neutral but unproven. Anthropic has effectively acknowledged it must build capacity through partners it does not fully trust, because the partners it does trust now compete with it.

The takeaway: the $750 billion figure is a floor, not a ceiling, and part of it covers deals that may never close.

What does the filing say about AI risk and liability?

Building on previously reported catastrophic risk disclosures, the filing warns that Anthropic could be held liable for damages caused by harmful AI behavior in amounts that would exceed its available insurance coverage. In plain terms, if a Claude-powered system causes serious harm, the bill could outrun whatever insurance the company has bought.

That disclosure matters for investors more than the cloud math does. Compute shortages raise costs; liability exposure threatens solvency. Anthropic is telling prospective shareholders, in writing, that a worst-case outcome is uninsurable.

The takeaway: the filing concedes a tail risk that no insurance policy fully covers.

Is revenue growth fast enough to change the picture?

Possibly, and the company is leading with its best number. Last week, Anthropic told prospective investors that third-quarter revenue alone reached $16.8 billion — more than the entire first half — up 45% from the previous quarter. Anthropic is reportedly targeting a November IPO.

The growth is real, but so is the math problem. A quarter of $16.8 billion annualizes to roughly $67 billion a year, against an $80.7 billion loss racked up in just six months. The gap narrows; it does not close.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.

The takeaway: revenue is compounding quickly, and investors will have to judge whether it compounds faster than the losses.

What happens next?

A November IPO would test whether public markets will underwrite a company with a nine-figure-billion cloud bill, two concentrated customers, unproven data center partners and disclosed uninsurable AI risk. The $16.8 billion quarter is the pitch; the $80.7 billion half-year loss is the prospectus.