Before Anthropic's IPO: who pays for the compute, and who carries the loss if revenue lags

Key takeaways

Anthropic is the company that develops the Claude family of AI models. Anthropic earns money when businesses and individuals pay to use Claude, and the company is preparing to list on a US stock exchange. Training and running the models takes a great deal of computer processing power, which the industry calls compute. This piece asks: Anthropic's revenue is growing fast, but if revenue cannot keep up with the multi-year bills for compute, who carries the loss?

Our read: if revenue falls short, every company selling compute to Anthropic sells less, but only two suppliers could see a loss on their books, and no loss has happened yet. The first is Broadcom, which sells AI chips and AI racks. Financiers, the finance firms that put up the money, buy AI racks from Broadcom and lease them to Anthropic. An AI rack is a fully assembled cabinet of machines that goes into a data center to run AI. Broadcom has promised two things. Should Anthropic fall behind on rent for a while, Broadcom first lends Anthropic the money. Should Anthropic still not pay and the lease default, Broadcom then compensates the financiers. Both can happen, one after the other. Broadcom's report does not name the customer; that the customer is Anthropic is this publication's finding from matching a press release. The second is Amazon, which also sells compute but is exposed another way: Amazon holds Anthropic shares and, at the price investors paid in the latest funding round, has already booked a large gain. Revenue falling short would push down the share price at listing; if that price is lower, part of the gain may have to be given back (this publication's inference). For the other companies selling compute, public information shows no arrangement to lend money or guarantee payments.

One: Revenue arrives month by month, while compute bills are signed for years

Anthropic makes money in several ways. Businesses build Claude into their own products and pay by usage. Individuals pay a monthly subscription (Claude pricing page). Part of the sales also goes through cloud providers that resell Claude, such as Amazon's cloud platform (AWS page). Each one needs compute first: training a model takes compute, and so does every customer use of Claude.

Compute is bought or rented from Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX and others, each contract running to tens of billions of dollars (section four). Revenue depends on how much customers use: when they use less, revenue drops, while the amounts owed under the contracts are fixed in advance.

Why ask now: on June 1, Anthropic announced that it had confidentially submitted a draft listing document to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (company announcement). The SEC is the agency that receives listing applications and the financial reports of listed companies. A confidential submission means the document stays private until shortly before the shares start trading. Outside reports put the public version as early as late October, a date the company has not confirmed.

Two: Revenue is growing fast, but most figures are self-reported run rates

Almost every revenue figure Anthropic gives is a run rate: the revenue from a recent period scaled up to a full year, as a shop quotes one month's sales times twelve. The figure shows speed, but it is not money collected over a year, and no auditor has checked it.

By company announcements, the run rate was US$14 billion in February (February funding announcement) and above US$47 billion in May (May funding announcement). In August, CNBC reported that Anthropic had told investors in an update that the run rate reached US$65 billion at the end of July. Three anonymous sources relayed the figure; the company has not announced it publicly (CNBC, August 17).

The same report puts Anthropic's revenue for all of 2025 at roughly US$10 billion, money actually collected over the year.

Three: The "first profitable quarter" was a May forecast

On May 20, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and Reuters all reported that Anthropic might post its first profitable quarter. The Wall Street Journal's original has not been obtained; this piece works from the Reuters account. Reuters wrote that the figures came from Anthropic's recent fundraising materials: second-quarter revenue could reach at least US$10.9 billion, with operating profit forecast at US$559 million (Reuters, via Yahoo Finance). Operating profit is what is left of revenue after the costs and expenses of running the business.

In August, CNBC cited one person saying preliminary second-quarter revenue was US$11.5 billion, above the May forecast. Whether the second quarter was actually profitable has no figure in any public source as of this piece's publication. So the "first profitable quarter" story cannot yet show that Anthropic can pay the multi-year bills in section four.

Four: Every compute contract runs to tens of billions

Figures in public documents:

• AWS is Amazon's cloud division. In May, Anthropic announced it would buy up to 5 GW of new compute from Amazon, with no amount stated. A GW, a gigawatt, measures a data center's power draw. Amazon's second-quarter report says AWS and Anthropic expanded their existing multi-year commitment by more than US$100 billion over ten years. Who pays whom under the US$100 billion, and what Anthropic pays AWS each year, the report does not spell out; neither document says whether the 5 GW and the US$100 billion are the same deal (Amazon quarterly report). A quarterly report is the financial report a listed company files with the SEC every quarter.
• In November 2025, Anthropic announced a commitment to buy US$30 billion of Microsoft Azure cloud compute (company announcement).
• SpaceX owns a data center for AI training and is itself applying to list. Reuters, relaying SpaceX's listing filing, wrote that Anthropic agreed to pay US$1.25 billion a month for compute through May 2029.

The SpaceX contract alone, if it runs its course without early termination, comes to US$15 billion a year, US$1.25 billion times twelve months. That is half again as much as Anthropic's revenue for all of last year (our calculation: 15 ÷ 10), and a little over 20% of the July run rate (our calculation: 15 ÷ 65). But Reuters, relaying the same filing, also wrote that either Anthropic or SpaceX can terminate on 90 days' notice. The account mentions no termination fee or minimum payment, and the full filing has not been obtained, so whether this is a locked-in obligation is not yet known; whether the other contracts have exit terms, public information does not say.

What these contracts add up to per year cannot be assembled from public information: some state totals, some state monthly payments, and some state no term.

Five: Part of the money that fills the gap comes from financiers and Broadcom

The first way to fill the gap is fundraising. Anthropic names each funding round with a letter: Series G in February raised US$30 billion and Series H in May raised US$65 billion, US$95 billion across the two rounds. This is money investors put into the company, not revenue; it only happens to share the US$65 billion figure with the July run rate in section two.

The second way gets less attention. On June 9, Broadcom and two finance firms, Apollo and Blackstone, jointly announced a financing platform (joint press release). Apollo leads the financiers who put up the money, and the first US$35 billion goes to more than 1 GW of compute expansion for Anthropic.

In time order, the money flows like this:

1. Financiers put up money and buy racks from Broadcom. The first US$35 billion is the money for this step; it is paid to Broadcom, not to Anthropic.

2. The financiers lease the racks to Anthropic, and Anthropic pays the financiers rent every month.

3. Rent temporarily unpaid: Anthropic can issue IOUs to borrow from Broadcom, up to US$42 billion, and the borrowed money can only be used to pay this lease. This kind of IOU is called a convertible promissory note, and it can later be exchanged for Anthropic shares.

4. Lease default: Broadcom pays the financiers by formula, 85% of the rent still owed over the rest of the lease, minus what is recovered by selling the racks; the report states that once all racks are deployed, this reaches at most about US$29 billion, the worst case.

The US$42 billion and US$29 billion both come from Broadcom's quarterly report for the quarter ended August 2 (Broadcom quarterly report), which names the customer only as "a customer". This publication identifies the customer as Anthropic because the dates match: Broadcom's previous quarterly report (quarter ended May 3) added one event from after its quarter ended, that this arrangement was agreed on June 8; the three companies' press release the next day says the first money goes to Anthropic. Why Broadcom agreed: the report says the platform bridges the gap between the cash leading AI companies have on hand and the large sums they must invest up front, and the racks are Broadcom's own products.

These three numbers should not be compared with one another: US$35 billion is the first-batch rack money in the press release, while US$42 billion and US$29 billion are ceilings for the whole arrangement in the quarterly report. How many batches follow, what each costs and how the two ceilings were worked out, neither document says. What Broadcom would owe the financiers also moves: the same report says the guarantee grows as racks are delivered and deployed batch by batch, and shrinks each time Anthropic pays rent. Paid in full, it would be about 30% of Broadcom's current stockholders' equity (our calculation: 29 ÷ 99.7). Stockholders' equity is what belongs to shareholders after a company's liabilities are subtracted from its assets; Broadcom's was about US$99.7 billion at quarter end.

If step 4 follows step 3, say Broadcom lends Anthropic enough to pay several months of rent and the lease defaults afterwards, Broadcom could lose on both, but the loss is not US$42 billion plus US$29 billion: the borrowed money can only pay rent, and, by this publication's inference, the months paid with borrowed money no longer count in what Broadcom owes the financiers. How much the two overlap depends on how many months were borrowed for, which the report does not say, so the combined worst case cannot be calculated.

Six: Anthropic's valuation also lands in a supplier's financial report

Amazon has invested in Anthropic since 2023, and Amazon's second-quarter report says Amazon put in another US$5 billion in Series G and US$5 billion in Series H this year. A valuation is a company's total worth at the price investors pay in a funding round. Anthropic's valuation rose from US$380 billion at Series G in February to US$965 billion at Series H in May (both round announcements). Anthropic is not yet listed, so the shares have no market price. Amazon's report says the value of the stake is adjusted to the price investors paid in Anthropic's funding rounds. As the valuation rose, Amazon marked up its Anthropic preferred stock, including the part that began as earlier investments in the form of IOUs and was later exchanged for shares, by about US$50.5 billion in the second quarter, recorded as other income outside the main business; it is not new money invested. Preferred stock is the class of shares Anthropic issues to investors in funding rounds.

How large the mark-up is: pre-tax income is profit before taxes, and Amazon's second-quarter figure was about US$80.9 billion, about 60% of which came from this paper mark-up (our calculation: 50.5 ÷ 80.9).

The report also says that in valuing the stake, Amazon considers when and how Anthropic's shares are expected to become sellable, such as through a listing. From this, this publication infers that once a listing sets a share price, that price becomes the new basis for the valuation, and if it is below the funding-round price, the gain on the books may be marked down; how the stake will actually be adjusted, Amazon has not said.

Seven: Five things to check the day the listing document goes public

1. Audited full-year revenue:

• Whether audited 2025 revenue is about US$10 billion.
• For the part sold through cloud providers, whether it is booked gross or net. Gross booking records everything the customer pays as revenue; net booking records only what is left after the cloud provider's share. The method changes how large revenue looks.
• Whether revenue is broken out into the three sources in section one, and how much each contributes.

2. The actual second-quarter operating profit: against the May forecast of US$559 million, whether the quarter really made money. Also how the figure is computed, for instance whether it includes employee stock compensation, that is, pay given to staff in shares; it costs no cash, but counting it as a cost lowers profit, so the same quarter can turn from a profit into a loss.

3. The table of future purchase commitments: a listing document normally lists money already contracted for coming years; set against section four, it shows what public information misses.

4. Leased compute and guarantees: how the Broadcom platform and the SpaceX contract are disclosed, and whether termination clauses and guarantees are spelled out.

5. Amazon and Google: both sell compute to Anthropic (the Google deal is in the appendix). The listing document will show how much Amazon holds, whether Google holds shares too, whether both are listed as related parties, and how much Anthropic buys from each. A related party is an entity with a special relationship to the company, such as a shareholding, whose dealings with the company must be disclosed separately.

What would prove this wrong: if the listing document shows that the customer behind Broadcom's guarantee is not Anthropic, the Broadcom half of this reading falls. If most compute contracts turn out to be short-term and exitable at any time, or Anthropic's cash on hand covers its multi-year commitments, revenue falling short would not leave Anthropic with bills it cannot pay, and this piece's reading is withdrawn.

Appendix: where the numbers come from

Where each number comes from

Verbatim lines

The original wording behind each row above, verbatim from the source (amounts in the units of the original):

1. "Today, our run-rate revenue is $14
  billion"
2. "Our run-rate revenue has now surpassed
  $30 billion"
3. "our run-rate revenue crossed $47
  billion earlier this month"
4. "shared the figure in an update to
  investors over the weekend, according to
  three sources"
5. "the roughly $10 billion in revenue the
  company generated for all of 2025"
6. "its June quarter sales could reach at
  least $10.9 billion"
7. "second-quarter operating profit to an
  expected $559 million"
8. "spent 71 cents per dollar of revenue on
  compute. This quarter, that figure is
  expected to drop to 56 cents"
9. "a preliminary revenue figure of $11.5
  billion for the second quarter"
10. "by more than $ 100.0 billion over 10.0
  years"
11. "committed to purchase $30 billion of
  Azure compute capacity"
12. "$1.25 billion per month through May
  2029""terminate the agreements with 90
  days' notice"
13. "a $50 billion investment in American
  computing infrastructure"
14. "We have raised $30 billion in Series
  G""Anthropic has raised $65 billion in
  Series H"
15. "$15 billion of previously committed
  investments from hyperscalers"
16. "an initial tranche of $35 billion led
  by Apollo"
17. "maximum potential liability under the
  Backstop … approximately $ 29 billion"
18. "convertible promissory notes up to an
  aggregate principal amount of $ 42
  billion"
19. "Total stockholders' equity 99,
  690"(US$ million)
20. "invested $ 5.0 billion in Anthropic
  Series G""investing $ 5.0 billion in
  Anthropic Series H"
21. "upward adjustments of approximately $
  50.5 billion in Q2 2026""portions of our
  convertible notes investments in
  Anthropic … that were converted to
  nonvoting preferred stock during Q1 2025
  and Q1 2026"
22. "Income before income taxes … 80,
  857"(US$ million)
23. "$20 if billed monthly"(individual
  plan), "Input $10 / MTok"(API)
24. "Claude’s availability in Amazon
  Bedrock"
25. "a new agreement with Google and
  Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of
  next-generation TPU capacity that we
  expect to come online starting in 2027"
26. "On June 8, 2026, we arranged for an
  investor partner""The backstop will
  increase over time as the AI racks are
  deployed and decrease as the customer
  makes payments on its lease obligations,
  with a maximum exposure of $ 29 billion"
27. "designed to enable more than 20
  gigawatts in compute capacity … for
  leading frontier AI labs, including
  Anthropic and OpenAI, through 2028"
28. "valuing Anthropic at $380 billion
  post-money""valuing the company at $965
  billion post-money"
29. "From Q3 2023 to Q4 2025, we invested
  $ 8.0 billion in convertible notes from
  Anthropic"
30. "We signed agreements with Amazon for up
  to five gigawatts of new capacity"
31. "estimates of expected time to and type
  of liquidity events and anticipated
  securities offerings"

This piece's calculations

• July run rate as a multiple of last year's full-year revenue: 65 ÷ 10 ≈ 6.5. The two figures are computed differently; see section two.
• SpaceX contract per year: US$1.25 billion × 12 = US$15 billion (assuming no early termination).
• SpaceX contract per year against last year's full-year revenue: 15 ÷ 10 = 1.5, half again as much.
• SpaceX contract per year against the July run rate: 15 ÷ 65, a little over 20%.
• Two rounds combined: 30 + 65 = US$95 billion (US$15 billion of Series H was previously committed).
• Guarantee ceiling against Broadcom's stockholders' equity: 29 ÷ 99.69 ≈ 29%. This is a side-by-side comparison, not an accounting exposure ratio.
• How the guarantee is computed: Broadcom's quarterly report filed in September says the payout is 85% of the amount owed, minus the value received from selling the racks. Once all racks are deployed, the ceiling is about US$29 billion. What amount owed that ceiling is computed from, the report does not break out. The same report also states that the platform is meant to bridge the gap between the cash flow and the upfront investment of leading AI labs.
• US$29 billion cannot be checked by multiplying US$35 billion by 85%. US$29 billion is the ceiling after all racks are deployed, and this piece has not isolated the base it is computed from.
• Anthropic paper gain as a share of Amazon's pre-tax income: 50.5 ÷ 80.857 ≈ 62%.

The previously committed money inside Series H

The US$65 billion of Series H is money investors put into the company; it only happens to equal the July run rate of US$65 billion in section two. US$15 billion of Series H is money that cloud providers had promised earlier and paid in at this round. That US$15 billion is counted inside the US$65 billion. Amazon invested US$5 billion in Series H, as section six notes. This publication's reading, from the Series H announcement: that US$5 billion is included in the US$15 billion. Neither document states this directly.

Where this sits on this publication's trend map

This publication draws how AI companies fund compute as the map below: from their own cash flow, to borrowing and circular financing, to suppliers backing the deal with their own credit. Circular financing means money going around in a loop between supplier and customer: the supplier funds the customer, and the customer uses the money to buy the supplier's products. The Broadcom guarantee read in this piece sits on the last branch. Amazon's stake is a different kind of link: the supplier holds the customer's shares, and the customer's valuation rising or falling flows into the supplier's income. That link is not a backstop.

The compute-cost relay

The Decoder, a technology news site, relayed The Wall Street Journal: in the first quarter, 71 cents of every dollar of revenue went to compute, and the second-quarter forecast is 56 cents (The Decoder). The relay does not say whether this compute cost includes the compute used to train models.

This publication's earlier error

This publication's July 20 deep dive on model vendors' gross margins recorded the US$559 million second-quarter operating profit and the 71→56 cents as realised results reported by CNBC. The figures in fact came from The Wall Street Journal's reporting. US$559 million and 56 cents are company forecasts; 71 cents is the company's self-reported first-quarter figure. A correction was added at the top of that report's archive page on October 18.

Other accounts (set side by side, not used in the main text)

• Second- and third-quarter revenue: IFR, the International Financing Review, a publication that covers capital-markets deals, wrote in October that third-quarter revenue was US$16.8 billion and second-quarter revenue US$11.6 billion, without stating the source of the figures. CNBC's August preliminary second-quarter figure is US$11.5 billion.
• Outside estimates of the run rate: DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria estimates about US$74 billion at the end of the third quarter. This is an analyst's estimate.
• Listing timetable: Renaissance Capital is a research firm that tracks the US IPO calendar. On October 16 Renaissance Capital wrote that the public version could be filed as early as October 23. IFR on October 15 cited one person familiar with the matter saying a public filing on October 26 and an investor roadshow from November 9. The company has confirmed neither.
• A circulating draft of the listing document: investors on social platforms have quoted a draft listing document said to have leaked, listing Anthropic's year-by-year commitments to three cloud providers. The document is not public and cannot be checked; this piece uses none of its figures.
• SpaceX contract signing date: third parties who read the filing give May 3 and May 6; this piece uses neither.
• Google and Broadcom compute agreement: Anthropic has also signed an agreement with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU compute, TPU being the AI chip Google designs, expected online from 2027 (company announcement). What each company provides, and whether these are the same machines as the rack platform in section five, the announcement does not say.
• Own data centers: in November 2025, Anthropic announced a US$50 billion investment to build its own data centers in Texas and New York (company announcement). How that money is raised, and whether it overlaps with the rack leases in section five, the announcement does not say; the main text does not go into it.

Sources

• Anthropic announcements: Series G, Series H, confidential draft IPO filing, Google and Broadcom compute agreement, Microsoft and NVIDIA partnership, US$50 billion data centers
• Amazon quarterly report for the second quarter of 2026 (10-Q, accession 0001018724-26-000026)
• Broadcom quarterly report for the quarter ended August 2, 2026 (10-Q, accession 0001730168-26-000080) and the quarter ended May 3, 2026 (accession 0001730168-26-000054)
• Broadcom, Apollo and Blackstone joint press release (2026-06-09)
• CNBC 2026-05-20, CNBC 2026-08-17
• Reuters 2026-05-20 (via Yahoo Finance)
• The Decoder 2026-05-21
• Renaissance Capital 2026-10-16, IFR 2026-10-15
• Claude pricing page, the Claude page on AWS Bedrock (read 2026-10-23)
• Available only as relayed: SpaceX's listing filing (via Reuters), The Wall Street Journal's May report (via Reuters and The Decoder).

Written from the same research and judgments as the Traditional Chinese edition. Sources are linked; we distinguish original documents from reporting and mark what we could not verify.