Anthropic compute costs hit 58% of revenue in new filing

Anthropic's updated S-1 extends its financial disclosures by an extra quarter, to September 30, beyond the prior filing's coverage through June 30. The picture that emerges is of a company growing revenue quickly while its compute bill outpaces that growth. The filing attributes part of the pressure to short-term commitments, which it says currently cost significantly more than comparable compute procured under multi-year commitments. Public deals with SpaceX, Nscale, Akamai and Volta illustrate the pattern: these are neoclouds, smaller outfits offering more flexible compute deals at higher rates, rather than hyperscalers.

The company says it expects compute and infrastructure expenses to increase in absolute dollars and remain its largest operating expense for the foreseeable future, as additional committed compute becomes available under multi-year arrangements with CSPs. Anthropic is pursuing its own compute base under Anthropic Direct, but the filing suggests demand is growing too fast for those efforts to keep pace, leaving neoclouds as its best available option.

The worsening margins could be a blip rather than a long-term problem, though they depend on the infrastructure buildout. The data center buildout could slow if bond markets get skittish or local opposition intensifies, risks Anthropic can do little to address.