Big Tech is pouring more than $700 billion into data centers this year. Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), one of its biggest customers, builds almost none of the ones it runs on.
The AI lab’s IPO prospectus, filed Monday, shows it spent $482 million on its own property and equipment in the first half of 2026. It spent $8.9 billion renting computing from others, nearly four times as much as a year earlier.
The bigger numbers are still ahead. Anthropic has signed four deals it can’t cancel worth about $430 billion, by Yahoo Finance calculations, and the largest isn’t with a cloud giant. Broadcom (AVGO) leads at about $161 billion, ahead of Google (GOOG, GOOGL) at about $115 billion, Amazon (AMZN) at $110 billion, and Microsoft (MSFT) at about $45 billion.
The filing sets up what could be the biggest IPO on record, as Yahoo Finance reported.
Broadcom’s chips, Anthropic’s lease
Broadcom’s deal is a set of five-year equipment leases for hardware built on Google’s TPU chips, installed in data centers operated by others for Anthropic. The leases are booked as finance leases and can’t be canceled short of a default.
Then come the softer deals. Anthropic agreed to spend up to about $121 billion with SpaceX’s (SPCX) AI unit into 2029, though either side can walk away on 90 days’ notice after early 2027. Deals with Nscale and Lambda for Nvidia (NVDA) chips add about $86 billion. Count those, and the named deals reach about $637 billion. The filing left its own grand total blank.
Anthropic’s bill is Google’s and Amazon’s backlog
These contracts are for rent, not construction. That makes them the providers’ future revenue — and a big piece of it.
Anthropic’s commitments equal about 22% each of Amazon Web Services’ $496 billion backlog and Google Cloud’s $514 billion as of June 30, by Yahoo Finance calculations. For Microsoft, whose $678 billion commercial backlog includes software, the figure is 6.6%.
Spread evenly, the four locked-in deals work out to roughly $66 billion a year. That’s nearly half of the $135 billion to $145 billion Meta (META) plans to spend this year, part of a data center build-out that could double next year.
The loss is mostly on paper
Anthropic brought in $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half. Its $80.7 billion net loss includes a $72.4 billion noncash charge as its convertible notes and similar securities rose in value. The operating loss was $693 million.
Public investors aren’t just buying an AI model. They’re picking up the rent.
The next reveal comes Wednesday, when Alphabet reports after the close. Anthropic expanded its Google deal over the summer, after the backlog figure above. A jump well past $514 billion would fit a bigger Anthropic bill, turning into Google sales. A flat reading would suggest the rent is still to come.
Internal AI tools helped analyze interview transcripts, research, and draft this post. Humans reviewed, edited, and fact-checked this post before publication.
Follow Jared Blikre on X @SPYJared or email him at [email protected].
Source: finance.yahoo.com
