Anthropic is running into trouble with the very cloud giants that power it — because AWS, Google, and Microsoft increasingly see the Claude maker as a rival rather than a customer. That’s according to a leaked S-1 filing reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Anthropic (Credits: Getty Images)
The filing adds sharp color to figures Reuters and the Financial Times reported in late September: Anthropic believes it could spend more than $750 billion on cloud contracts, some of which are still under negotiation. And even that staggering sum isn’t enough to secure the compute it needs.
Hyperscalers Becoming Competitors
The core tension is hard to miss. The same hyperscalers Anthropic rents capacity from are racing it with their own frontier models. Anthropic is now leasing its own data centers and working with third-party operators to fill the gap — but the filing worries those operators have a “limited operating history,” making them less reliable than the big three.
The spending sits atop brutal financials: an $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of the year against $16.3 billion in revenue, with just two customers accounting for about a fifth of sales. The filing also warns, in unusually blunt terms, that Anthropic could be held liable for damages from harmful AI behavior in amounts exceeding its insurance coverage.
IPO Still On Track
Still, momentum is real. Last week the company told prospective investors that third-quarter revenue alone hit $16.8 billion, up 45% quarter over quarter. Anthropic is reportedly targeting a November IPO. Anthropic did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The message of the filing: the AI boom’s biggest constraint isn’t talent or demand — it’s the sheer, eye-watering cost of the chips and data centers underneath it all, and the awkward reality of renting them from your competitors.
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Source: TechCrunch — read the full story there.