Anthropic’s initial public offering prospectus, obtained by Reuters, provides a rare glimpse into the AI developer’s financial structure as it seeks a valuation of roughly $2 trillion. The filing shows that 47% of the company’s 2025 revenue – about $2.16 billion – was generated through cloud marketplaces operated by Amazon and Alphabet’s Google.
Revenue growth and partnership fees
Revenue surged twelve‑fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, while operating losses more than doubled to exceed $8 billion. About $3.8 billion of that revenue came from customers paying for usage of Anthropic’s Claude AI system, with subscription revenue accounting for $789 million.
The company paid roughly $351 million in distribution fees to the cloud platforms, a rate of about 16 cents for every dollar of sales processed through those marketplaces. Anthropic records these fees under the “sales, marketing, and partnerships” line item.
Strategic rationale for the cloud relationships
Anthropic frames its reliance on Amazon, Google and Microsoft as a strategic advantage. By offering Claude through the three major cloud platforms, the firm can tap their extensive sales networks and reach customers already using those services, accelerating market penetration at a scale that would be difficult for a single organization to achieve alone.
Nevertheless, the prospectus acknowledges that dependence on a limited number of partners creates “complex dynamics” that could lead to conflicts of interest and potentially affect Anthropic’s access to compute resources.
Long‑term compute commitments
At the end of 2025, Anthropic reported $54.6 billion in non‑cancellable hosting and computing commitments. By early 2026, total long‑term commitments had risen to more than $417 billion, covering 3.5 gigawatts of dedicated computing capacity.
Customer concentration risks
Beyond the cloud partners, Anthropic’s customer base is also concentrated. Two unnamed customers each contributed 12% of the company’s 2025 revenue, and many of its largest customers are not bound by long‑term contracts, leaving the firm vulnerable to sudden spending cuts.
The filing notes that the cloud providers themselves act as customers, collecting 60% of the $909 million in outstanding customer bills at the end of 2025, up from 42% in 2024. Disputes or delays in this billing pipeline could impact Anthropic’s cash flow.
Accounting approach under scrutiny
Anthropic records the full value of marketplace contracts as revenue because it sets prices and delivers the service, treating the platforms’ cut as a marketing expense. OpenAI has argued that this method inflates Anthropic’s reported revenue by billions of dollars. Anthropic responded that its accounting follows established practices, recognizing gross revenue as it is the “principal” in the transaction.
Outlook
The company expects consumption‑based revenue to remain the “substantial majority” of its earnings for the foreseeable future. As Anthropic continues to invest heavily in compute capacity and expand its AI offerings, the balance between partnership benefits and dependency risks will remain a focal point for investors and regulators alike.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
