Anthropic to pay Microsoft at least $44.9 billion through 2033

Anthropic's S-1 prospectus, out on Monday, offers investors a first detailed look at the company's cost structure ahead of its expected IPO at a $2 trillion valuation. The filing shows Anthropic has contracted with several cloud platforms for computing power, with Microsoft among the last of the three big cloud computing platforms to invest in the company, in part due to Microsoft's close relationship with OpenAI.

The disclosed commitments extend well beyond Microsoft: $114.5 billion with Alphabet over a similar time frame, $110 billion with Amazon through 2036, and approximately $3.1 billion per month with Space Exploration Technologies through 2029. Anthropic spent nearly $9 billion on compute and infrastructure in the first half of the year, its biggest line item cost by far. The company's future cloud spending commitments go hand in hand with its growth, and computing power is scarce right now, so Anthropic needs such moves to secure compute or it will struggle to grow, according to the filing's framing.

The bull vs. bear debate will continue no matter what happens when Anthropic goes public, but the debut will give investors a clear idea of where AI sentiment stands today, with both upside and downside in the coming months.