Anthropic IPO Filing: Three Major Cloud Providers' Channels Contribute 48% of Revenue

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Anthropic's "frenemy" business: Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are both partners and rivals

Cailian Press Zhao Hao, Editor Lin Qi, 2026-10-27 03:31

① According to the IPO filing Anthropic published on Monday, in the first half of 2026, sales generated through "hyperscale cloud service providers" accounted for 48% of Anthropic's total revenue; ② Amazon and Google are both important shareholders of Anthropic, but the IPO filing did not disclose how many shares the two companies specifically hold.

Cailian Press, October 27 (Editor Zhao Hao) — The latest filings show that Anthropic is increasingly relying on Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to sell its artificial intelligence technology to customers.

According to the IPO filing Anthropic published on Monday, in the first half of 2026, sales generated through the cloud marketplaces of these three "hyperscalers" accounted for 48% of Anthropic's total revenue, compared with only 11% in 2023.

These cloud service providers collect payments from customers and, after deducting their own fees, transfer the funds to Anthropic. The fees Anthropic pays to channel partners—a category that includes the aforementioned cloud service providers—increased by $2.7 billion in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year.

This partnership model has driven Anthropic's rapid growth. The company's second-quarter sales reached $11.555 billion, while it recorded an operating profit of $974 million.

Anthropic's IPO will be an important event for testing public-market investors' sentiment toward the AI industry. Investors now appear to be paying more attention to the high costs of large-scale AI infrastructure construction.

Earlier this month, reports said Anthropic's revenue growth was slowing in the third quarter, further intensifying a broader tech stock selloff, amid market concerns that AI spending may already be growing faster than actual demand.

Anthropic also explicitly warned of these risks in its S-1 filing, describing these cloud service providers as playing four roles at once: "investor, customer, distribution partner, and competitor." The company warned that these cloud service providers "are able to learn about our pricing and commercial terms."

The filing also noted that these cloud companies may prioritize promoting their own AI models; in addition, Anthropic's close relationships with these companies have already drawn the attention of antitrust regulators and may face further scrutiny in the future.

The "circular deals" model

Anthropic had previously been criticized for so-called "circular deals" in the tech industry: the same companies both inject funds into Anthropic's balance sheet and generate revenue from Anthropic.

Anthropic is an important customer of Amazon AWS, using Amazon's data centers and chips to train and run the Claude model, while Amazon offers Claude to customers through its Bedrock platform.

Similarly, Anthropic uses Google's custom AI chips, while Google sells Claude through its own cloud platform. In other words, these companies are simultaneously Anthropic's investors and suppliers, as well as its sales channels and competitors.

Anthropic also relies on these companies for computing power. The company has committed to paying Google at least $114.5 billion by 2033, Amazon at least $110 billion by 2036, and Microsoft $44.9 billion.

Moreover, these minimum commitments remain in effect regardless of whether Anthropic ultimately actually uses this computing capacity.

The "frenemy" relationship with cloud giants

These figures further reflect the complex "frenemy" relationship between Anthropic and the cloud giants.

When Anthropic reached an agreement with Amazon in April this year, Anthropic called AWS its "primary training and cloud service provider for mission-critical workloads." But judging by contract value, Anthropic's minimum purchase commitment to Google is larger, and its term is shorter.

In addition, Anthropic is expected to pay $125 billion to $150 billion for additional TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) computing power. This additional computing power will come from Google and other suppliers and is scheduled to be delivered between 2028 and 2031.

Amazon and Google are both major shareholders of Anthropic

Amazon and Google are both important shareholders of Anthropic, but the IPO filing did not disclose how many shares the two companies specifically hold.

One reason is that the shares they hold have no voting rights, so they were not included in the list of shareholders "holding more than 5% of Anthropic's voting securities."

However, Anthropic said elsewhere in the filing that during the IPO offering, after the conversion of preferred shares and certain convertible notes, the shares held by Amazon and Google will each exceed 5% of the company.

Since agreeing in 2023 to invest up to $4 billion, Amazon has built a very deep investment and business relationship with Anthropic.

According to the IPO filing: Amazon has so far invested approximately $18 billion in Anthropic, and has committed to investing up to an additional $15 billion if certain conditions are met.

In addition, Amazon also holds convertible notes from purchase agreements in 2023 and 2024. These notes can be converted into up to 1.84 billion Anthropic shares, equivalent to approximately 10.9% of Anthropic's fully diluted shares as of June this year.

This does not include other equity stakes Amazon currently already holds. However, these convertible notes have one restriction: if conversion would cause Amazon's total shareholding to exceed 12%, the notes cannot be converted unless Amazon voluntarily waives this restriction.

The portion exceeding the 12% cap will automatically convert into new notes. These new notes can be converted at the end of subsequent quarters, but remain subject to the same 12% shareholding cap.

Google has already invested approximately $23 billion in Anthropic through multiple rounds of transactions, and has committed to further investing $20 billion after reaching specific performance targets. Under the latest round of financing agreements, Google's shareholding cap is 14.99%, and Google can likewise waive this restriction.

Anthropic is already deeply tied to cloud giants

The IPO filing details how Anthropic has tied its own success to these cloud computing giants.

Anthropic stated that if workloads were moved to other cloud service providers, the process would be "costly and time-consuming" and could harm the company's computing efficiency.

This means that Anthropic's reliance on Google, Amazon, and Microsoft is not merely a simple supplier relationship, but has become deeply embedded in the company's infrastructure and business model.

However, Anthropic's dependence does not stop with these three cloud computing giants. It also relies on other suppliers. For example: Anthropic has $161.2 billion in equipment leasing agreements related to Broadcom; Anthropic has agreed to spend up to $120.5 billion to obtain computing power from SpaceXAI.

In other words, Anthropic is building an extremely large-scale AI infrastructure system, but at the same time, this also means the company is increasingly dependent on a small number of large technology giants and chip suppliers.

Judging from the IPO filing, this dependence is both an important driving force behind Anthropic's rapid expansion and a major potential source of future cost, supply chain, competition, and antitrust risks.

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Cailian Press statement: The content of this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors who act on it do so at their own risk.

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