Anthropic IPO puts AI spending under the spotlight as losses mount

Anthropic’s US IPO filing puts a fresh spotlight on the high cost of staying ahead in artificial intelligence, with the Claude maker showing explosive revenue growth while taking on enormous spending commitments and widening losses, according to Reuters.

The company unveiled its IPO paperwork on Monday after confidentially filing in June. Reuters has reported in recent weeks on Anthropic’s aggressive AI ambitions, mounting costs and concerns over the “existential risks to humanity” posed by advanced AI.

Revenue surges, but losses remain steep

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic has built a strong position in the AI race through its Claude models, particularly in coding and enterprise applications.

According to Reuters, revenue surged to $4.59 billion in 2025 from $386 million in 2024 and $41 million in 2023. It then more than tripled to $16.29 billion in the first six months of 2026. But the rapid expansion is proving expensive. Anthropic recorded an operating loss of $693 million in the first half of 2026, after losing $8.06 billion in 2025, compared with $2.98 billion a year earlier.

Compute race comes with billion dollar commitments

Computing power is at the heart of Anthropic’s cost structure, with the company spending on cloud services, data centres, equipment leases and energy.

It has committed more than $500 billion with six partners over a decade, including at least $110 billion with Amazon, about $114.5 billion with Google and $44.9 billion with Microsoft for cloud computing over the next seven to 10 years.

That spending also reflects the increasingly interconnected nature of AI financing. Amazon and Google are among Anthropic’s biggest backers. Amazon has invested at least $13 billion and agreed to invest up to another $20 billion, while Google has committed up to $40 billion.Anthropic will retain a governance structure that gives its founders significant control after the listing. As a public benefit corporation, it is also required to balance investor interests with its broader mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity.

Competition is intensifying as OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk’s SpaceX pour billions into models, data centres and specialised chips. Ramp data showed Anthropic accounted for 60.1% of AI token spending in the week ended October 11, highlighting the momentum behind Claude as the IPO brings its spending model under greater investor scrutiny, Reuters reported.