Anthropic cloud spending reveals major winners in AI boom

The path to a $2 trillion IPO

Anthropic is preparing to enter the public stock market under the ticker symbol ANT. The company expects to be valued at approximately $2 trillion, a figure that would exceed the $1.75 trillion record set by Space Exploration Technologies earlier this year.

The company's recent S-1 filing provides a rare look at its financial trajectory and infrastructure needs. While the valuation is the headline, the document reveals how much Anthropic relies on external partners to fuel its growth.

The filing highlights a massive shift in how AI labs operate. Instead of building their own physical data centers, Anthropic is leveraging the existing scale of tech giants to power its models.

Renting the power of giants

Anthropic has experienced exponential revenue growth, jumping from $41 million in 2023 to $4.6 billion in 2025. Because the company grew so quickly, it did not have the time or resources to construct its own computing infrastructure from scratch.

To solve this, Anthropic formed close partnerships with Amazon and Alphabet. These companies have the capital necessary to build and operate the massive data centers required for high-level AI training and deployment.

By renting this power, Anthropic can scale its services immediately. This strategy allows the lab to focus on developing its Claude models while the cloud providers handle the heavy lifting of hardware maintenance and electricity.

Breaking down the spending

The financial commitment to these providers is staggering. Anthropic has committed to spending about $114.5 billion with Google Cloud through the year 2033. This includes a significant portion of the company's long-term operational budget.

In addition to standard cloud usage, Anthropic will use Alphabet's custom-designed Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). The company expects to pay between $125 billion and $150 billion for access to these specific chips between 2028 and 2031.

Amazon is also a primary partner in this ecosystem. Anthropic expects to pay Amazon roughly $110 billion in computing usage through 2036, bringing the total planned cloud spend with these two companies to about $224 billion.

The double-sided profit model

Cloud providers are positioned to win on both ends of the AI transaction. They receive direct payments from Anthropic to train and run its Claude models. They also profit from the users who choose to deploy those same models through their platforms.

When a business wants to integrate Claude into its own internal systems, they often use AWS or Google Cloud as the host. This means the cloud providers collect fees from the end-user as well as the AI developer.

This structure creates a continuous revenue stream for Alphabet and Amazon. Because cloud computing functions as a subscription service, these providers can capture value from every stage of the AI lifecycle.

From R&D to global rollout

Analysts suggest that the current phase of AI development is merely the research and development stage. They describe this period as 'Act 1' of the AI boom, which focuses on building the underlying technology and models.

The next phase, referred to as 'Act 2,' involves the global rollout of these technologies. This transition is expected to be significantly larger than the initial development phase, potentially reaching 14x the size of the current boom.

As the industry moves toward widespread adoption, the infrastructure costs will remain high. The massive spending revealed in Anthropic's filing suggests that the backbone of the AI economy is firmly rooted in the cloud.

Investment perspectives on Alphabet

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