Anthropic is still frantically acquiring computing power: a commitment of 89.54 billion USD, even old coal power plants are not spared

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Image processed by AI

Written by | Su Yang

Editor | Xu Qingyang

AI companies are becoming major infrastructure buyers.

Anthropic's expansion path has extended from training models and competing for enterprise customers to building data centers, procuring chips, and coordinating power resources. To gain sufficient computing power, the company has begun to directly engage in work that was previously mainly handled by cloud service providers and infrastructure operators.

On November 2, local time in the United States, Anthropic submitted an updated prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The document added relevant financial data for the third quarter of 2026 and disclosed long-term procurement and leasing arrangements.

The document shows that computing power has become the most important cost item in Anthropic's expansion process. To meet the training needs of the Claude model and the demands of enterprise customers, the company has not only signed long-term agreements with cloud service providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft but has also begun to directly procure chips, participate in data center construction, and seek power and facility resources from former cryptocurrency mining companies and new cloud service providers.

01 Revenue Growth of 12 Times, Operating Loss Reappears

The updated prospectus shows that Anthropic's revenue for the third quarter was $16.96 billion, up from $11.56 billion in the second quarter and significantly higher than approximately $1.38 billion in the same period of 2025.

In the first three quarters of this year, Anthropic's cumulative revenue reached $33.242 billion, compared to $2.545 billion in the same period last year, an increase of about 12 times.

However, the revenue growth did not bring a simultaneous improvement in operating profit.

In the third quarter, Anthropic's operating expenses rose to $17.5 billion, up from $10.6 billion in the second quarter. The company recorded an operating loss of $567 million for the quarter, compared to an operating profit of $974 million in the second quarter. Computing and infrastructure costs reached approximately $9.9 billion, nearly doubling from about $5.6 billion in the second quarter.

Anthropic attributed the shift to an operating loss primarily to short-term computing power procurement. Due to customer demand growth exceeding the previously locked-in computing power supply, Anthropic had to temporarily purchase additional computing resources in the market, where short-term procurement prices were significantly higher than those of multi-year agreements.

In the third quarter, Anthropic's short-term computing power procurement amounted to about $5 billion. Additionally, a non-cash expense of about $2 billion related to an employee donation matching program also impacted the operating results for the quarter.

Excluding stock-based compensation and the aforementioned donation matching expenses, Anthropic's adjusted operating profit margin for the third quarter was about 15%, down from 19% in the second quarter. The decline in adjusted profit margin reflects that during the revenue expansion process, computing power procurement and other operating costs are still eroding profit margins.

Price changes have also occurred. Anthropic disclosed that from the second quarter to the third quarter, the revenue increase from customer usage growth was partially offset by price reductions for new model versions and contract discounts, affecting an amount of about $600 million.

Anthropic's net loss for the third quarter was $23.29 billion, down from $66.3 billion in the second quarter. The cumulative net loss for the first three quarters reached $104.039 billion, of which about $94.3 billion was related to fair value changes of financial instruments such as convertible notes and derivative liabilities, mainly influenced by the company's rising valuation.

02 $895.4 Billion Commitment, Nearly Half to be Fulfilled by 2030

The prospectus disclosed that as of the end of September, Anthropic's cumulative expenditure commitments formed through procurement commitments and leasing agreements reached $895.4 billion, most of which were related to computing resources and infrastructure.

Of this amount, approximately $447.5 billion is expected to be fulfilled by December 31, 2030, with the remainder extending to 2031 to 2045. Commitments due within the next 12 months amount to about $69.8 billion.

This amount does not equate to existing interest-bearing debt, nor does it represent that Anthropic needs to pay all amounts immediately. It includes various types of procurement contracts, equipment leases, and data center-related agreements, with payment timelines spread over the coming years. However, some contracts have strong binding obligations, meaning that even if actual usage is below expectations, the company may still need to fulfill corresponding payment obligations.

From the contract composition, the yet-to-begin leasing commitments amount to about $321.4 billion, and fixed minimum procurement commitments are about $265.6 billion. These long-term arrangements lock in future computing power procurement and infrastructure usage costs, also placing long-term payment responsibilities on the company.

As of the end of September, Anthropic held a total of $131.845 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. If available credit lines are included, the company's total liquidity is about $146.6 billion.

Compared to the cash on hand, the scale of long-term commitments is significantly larger. The $895.4 billion is approximately 6.8 times Anthropic's cash and short-term investments; the $69.8 billion in commitments due within the next 12 months is equivalent to about 53% of existing cash and short-term investments.

The prospectus also clearly highlights the operational risks involved. Anthropic's revenue mainly comes from usage-based consumption businesses, with most revenue lacking long-term contract guarantees, while computing and infrastructure expenditures typically need to be locked in years in advance. The company may sign long-term agreements based on expected revenue, but future actual revenue may not meet expectations.

If customer revenue growth cannot cover related payments, or if the company cannot continue to finance under acceptable conditions, Anthropic may be unable to fulfill some contracts. Certain commercial agreement defaults may also trigger cross-default clauses in credit agreements and convertible notes, leading to early debt maturity or even causing suppliers to terminate cooperation.

Cost growth has already been reflected in financial data. In the first three quarters, Anthropic's computing and infrastructure expenses increased by 329% year-on-year, rising by about $14.4 billion. The related expenses for the third quarter were about $9.9 billion, accounting for approximately 58% of the quarter's revenue.

03 From Cloud Service Providers to Mining Companies, Anthropic is Globally Seeking Computing Power

According to foreign media reports, by the end of last year, Anthropic's management had realized that there was significant uncertainty in computing power demand forecasts, and subsequently signed dozens of computing power and infrastructure agreements, extending cooperation from large tech companies to data center startups, chip manufacturers, and companies that once engaged in cryptocurrency mining.

This round of procurement is no longer limited to purchasing cloud services. Anthropic has begun hiring data center construction and supply chain experts, directly purchasing server equipment and cooling systems to help partners accelerate data center construction. It has also engaged with multiple state data center developers to study grid access, project licensing, and the possibility of transforming old coal power plants and industrial facilities into data centers.

New cloud service providers and former cryptocurrency mining companies have thus entered Anthropic's supply system. Publicly available information compiled by foreign media shows that companies like Fluidstack and Lambda provide computing power resources, while TeraWulf and Hut 8 participate in data center construction.

These partners possess land, power access resources, or ready-made data center facilities. For Anthropic, utilizing existing sites and power resources can reduce the time required to build large campuses from scratch. For some former mining companies, transitioning to AI data centers also offers new business growth opportunities.

However, ready-made sites do not equate to immediately deliverable computing power. Power supply, equipment installation, and construction personnel may all slow down project progress.

Initially, Anthropic sought data center projects with a scale of at least around 200 MW, but later began accepting projects of about 50 MW, supplementing power supply through battery storage and natural gas generation. The company is also considering combining multiple small projects to gradually increase computing power capacity.

Anthropic has also begun to directly participate in the design and procurement of infrastructure projects. The company purchases chips, cooling systems, and other equipment, which are then installed by partner operators to shorten the time from project construction to computing power going online.

This model expands the range of resources Anthropic can access but also increases the complexity of project management. The construction cycles, equipment specifications, power conditions, and delivery times of different data centers are not consistent. Even if contracts have been signed, actual computing power must still go through construction, equipment installation, grid connection, and debugging before it can be put into use.

John Tough, managing partner at energy investment firm Energize Capital, believes that Anthropic does not have a complete pipeline of computing power supply and can only seek power and infrastructure resources globally, piecing together projects of different scales.

In the prospectus, Anthropic refers to this portion of dedicated infrastructure as Anthropic Direct. The company hopes to reduce reliance on higher-priced short-term computing power procurement by locking in dedicated capacity for the long term.

Foreign media cited insiders as saying that Anthropic expects to have over 3.5 GW of computing power capacity by 2026 and plans to double that capacity by 2027.

Anthropic's long-term computing power contracts are concentrated among a few large tech companies and infrastructure suppliers.

According to the prospectus and related disclosures, Anthropic's contract amount with Google is about $121.3 billion, with Amazon about $110 billion, and with Microsoft about $44.9 billion; the related agreement with SpaceX is up to about $120.5 billion, extending to 2036. In addition, the company also has related agreements with Fluidstack and Lambda.

The leasing commitments related to Broadcom amount to about $161.2 billion, which is also an important part of this computing power expenditure structure.

Additionally, Anthropic plans to procure about $125 billion to $150 billion worth of Google chips and expects to spend over $20 billion on AMD chips. These arrangements do not have fixed contract amounts and therefore are not included in the aforementioned total commitment of $895.4 billion.

Multi-chip architecture is another arrangement for Anthropic to reduce supply risks. The company stated in the prospectus that its computing power resources come from AWS Trainium, Google TPU, NVIDIA GPU, and AMD GPU, and it will unify the scheduling of computing power from different sources, allocating resources based on price and performance requirements for different tasks. This helps reduce reliance on a single chip supplier but also complicates the relationship between Anthropic and its supply chain partners.

Amazon and Google are not only important investors in Anthropic but also suppliers of cloud services and chip resources. Microsoft also provides cloud infrastructure. Broadcom participates in the supply of chips and devices. Anthropic pays these companies for computing power while also receiving investment or financing support from some of them.

Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney previously pointed out that the relationship between Anthropic and major cloud service providers has multiple attributes: they are both customers and competitors, sales channels, and investment targets.