Anthropic’s Compute Bill, and Who Carries the Risk

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26 — Anthropic’sAnthropic’s public prospectus, filed on Monday, puts names on its bill for computing power. The filing says Anthropic has agreed to pay rent of about $161.2 billion, excluding interest, under five-year equipment leases with Broadcom, and to spend up to $120.5 billion with SpaceXAI, at least about $114.5 billion with Google, at least $110.0 billion with Amazon and at least $44.9 billion with Microsoft.

That afternoon, Bank of America, Blackstone, Citi and Morgan Stanley announced a $63 billion financing, through a new special purpose vehicle, to buy Broadcom accelerators and networking gear and lease them to Anthropic. Broadcom is providing “residual value support” equal to the vehicle’s first-lien debt.

By this paper’s reading, the filing and the release also show who carries which risk. The three cloud companies hold minimums that Anthropic must pay “regardless of actual usage”; two other suppliers’ contracts carry conditions on their own financing or facilities; SpaceXAI’s can be cancelled by either side on 90 days’ notice after early 2027; and Broadcom, whose leases are the largest line, now supports debt raised to buy its own chips.

The Ledger

The figures sit on different footings: “at least” for Microsoft, Google and Amazon; “up to” for SpaceXAI and Nscale; “approximately” for Lambda; rent “excluding interest” for Broadcom; estimates for AMD and for more TPU capacity. The prospectus leaves its own total commitment blank, and this paper does not add the figures up.

Microsoft’s floor is $44.9 billion, from November 2026 to May 2033, against $31.4 billion in Anthropic’s last confidential draft, dated Oct. 9.The DraftsAnthropic’s six confidential drafts, submitted from June 1 to Oct. 9, are now public on EDGAR. The last put Google’s floor at about $111.1 billion and the arrangements with X.AI LLC, as SpaceXAI was then called, at up to $84.5 billion. Google’s floor is about $114.5 billion, to July 2033, and Amazon’s $110.0 billion, to April 2036, with a “true-up” if Anthropic spends less. Anthropic has also committed to buy more TPU capacity “from TPU providers, including Google,” for 2028 to 2031, and estimates the payments at approximately $125.0 billion to $150.0 billion, outside its table of commitments.

SpaceXAI, formerly X.AI LLC and a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX, sells Anthropic computing on Nvidia GPUs: up to $120.5 billion over terms extending into 2029, about $3.1 billion a month once all capacity is delivered, which Anthropic expects in December. At that fully delivered rate, SpaceXAI would bill about $9.3 billion a quarter, by this paper’s arithmetic, a future payment rate that is not directly comparable with the $5.6 billion of compute and infrastructure expense Anthropic recognized in its second quarter. Yet once non-cancelable periods end in January and March 2027, either party may cancel each agreement on 90 days’ notice: Anthropic can shed the cost, and SpaceX can lose the revenue.

The contracts with Nscale and Lambda, which also rent out Nvidia capacity, carry conditions of their own. Anthropic agreed to spend up to about $44.6 billion with Nscale into 2033, and Nscale must use “best efforts to obtain qualifying financing” within a set period. Of about $41.3 billion it agreed to spend with Lambda into 2034, about $34.9 billion is under an August agreement that either party “may terminate if Lambda does not timely secure the facility lease.” Anthropic’s fees begin only as capacity is delivered and accepted, so, by this paper’s reading, these suppliers and their lenders carry the financing and delivery risk until then; once capacity is available, Anthropic’s commitments are non-cancelable, with limited exceptions. On Sunday Elon Musk, whose SpaceX competes with the neoclouds, CNBC noted, wrote that “the 200+ neoclouds are going to see guppy-level death and consolidation.”

AMD’s deal runs the other way. If Anthropic takes all of an initial 2027 tranche of AMD-based Helios rack systems, it expects spending “to exceed $20.0 billion,” though the agreement “does not specify a fixed dollar commitment.” AMD, for its part, committed to buy up to $5.0 billion of Anthropic’s non-voting Class N stock, which Anthropic can draw in increments as GPU delivery and deployment milestones are met, the first expected in 2027.AMDNasdaq504.80▼61.62−10.9%Advanced Micro Devices · Friday’s session The seller, by this paper’s reading, would put part of the price back into its customer.

The Lessor

Broadcom’s is the largest single figure. Its five-year equipment leases give Anthropic TPU-based capacity, and neither side may cancel except on default. Anthropic, PBC guarantees its subsidiaries’ obligations under them, which are secured by the equipment and subject to cross-defaults. One lease, the 2026 Lease Arrangement, accounts for about $125.2 billion of the rent; to pay part of it, Anthropic may, if needed, issue up to $42.0 billion of convertible notes to Broadcom or a designated financial partner, normally at 9 percent a year added to principal, or 13 percent for notes issued while certain revenue-performance conditions are unmet.AVGONasdaq326.08▼18.92−5.5%Broadcom · Friday’s session

In Monday’s financing, Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley are arranging the first lien, Blackstone is the sole provider of the committed portion of the second lien, and “Broadcom is providing residual value support to the SPV for the amount equivalent to the first lien portion of the financing,” the release said. Reuters reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter, that the first lien is about $43.5 billion, or 69 percent of the total. The prospectus says Broadcom “intends to assign” its March 2026 lease “to a designated financial partner”; the release does not say whether the new vehicle is that partner.

Broadcom has backed such a deal before. Its quarterly report filed in September describes a $35 billion first tranche of its AI XPV platform for an unnamed customer, with a backstop of the customer’s five-year lease obligations; Broadcom’s maximum potential liability, once all the racks are deployed, was about $29 billion.The BackstopIf the customer defaults, Broadcom owes any difference between 85 percent of the amounts then owed and the value of the racks when sold, its report says. It had paid nothing under the backstop and judged its fair value not material. Reuters reported that the deal was a $35 billion expansion of Anthropic’s computing capacity, which Apollo and Blackstone had agreed to finance. Broadcom calls the residual value guarantees it may provide “contingent liabilities we believe would have a low probability of occurring.” Moody’s, Reuters reported, described Broadcom as one of the strongest large technology companies but warned that the risk would rise if several such deals were done over a short period.

Anthropic acknowledges the dependence: part of its build-out, it says, “has been funded or supported by capital or credit support provided or facilitated by certain of our CSPs and chip partners,” its cloud providers and chipmakers. By this paper’s reading, Broadcom now carries part of its customer’s credit risk, and the first-lien lenders have the chipmaker’s support behind them as well as the lab’s rent.

Who Pays

The named contracts are not the whole bill. Since June 30, Anthropic has signed new and amended agreements with “aggregate future minimum payment obligations of approximately $245 billion,” running up to 20 years, plus about $21 billion of short-term commitments.Since June 30The Oct. 9 draft, counting events through Sept. 30, gave about $154 billion here and, separately, contingent obligations of up to about $89 billion. The S-1 gives one figure, with some arrangements “subject to certain contractual conditions being met.” Its estimated future undiscounted obligations under leases signed but not yet begun rose from about $50.2 billion at the end of 2025 to about $321.4 billion at June 30, some of them subject to contractual conditions. How far these overlap the named contracts, the filing does not say.

Anthropic’s compute commitments “generally must be satisfied regardless of our revenue or utilization,” the prospectus says, while its revenue “is primarily consumption-based.” It has misjudged before: “In the past, we have significantly underestimated our compute requirements, which left us capacity constrained and impacted both product development and deployment.” Compute that arrives out of step with demand, it warns, could mean “committed cash outflows that do not produce immediate revenue.”

In the past, we have significantly underestimated our compute requirements, which left us capacity constrained and impacted both product development and deployment.

Anthropic’s answer is its cash and the shrinking share of revenue that compute consumes. It held $112.4 billion of cash and cash equivalents and $19.3 billion of short-term investments at June 30, and its compute and infrastructure expense fell from 251 percent of revenue in the first quarter of 2025 to 48 percent in the second quarter of 2026.

By this paper’s reading, the suppliers gain years of revenue from one customer, the lenders gain a chipmaker’s support, and the buyers of Anthropic’s shares take on commitments that the filing expects to run as late as 2045. What to watch: an amended filing that fills in the blank totals; SpaceXAI’s full delivery in December and its cancellation windows from early 2027; whether Nscale finds its financing and Lambda its facility; and the first deliveries to the new vehicle in 2027.

Daily Cortex is written with AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude, and fact-checked with OpenAI’s GPT models.