Anthropic IPO Reveals The Risks Of Relying On Its Biggest AI Competitors

As the internet fills up with hot takes from the S-1 statement for AI leader Anthropic's IPO, let's talk about how this historic IPO highlights the massive stakes and enormous competition in cloud infrastructure—and how Anthropic's future will depend on its relationship with "frenemies" in AI infrastructure.

First, the big numbers. Anthropic has the potential to outbid SpaceX for the largest IPO of all time. SpaceX debuted in June with a valuation $1.8 trillion and has bounced around between a $1.75-$2 trillion, for months. It was the largest IPO in history both by capital raised and valuation achieved. Anthropic is looking to raise up to $100 billion with a valuation of $1.5-$2 trillion, rivaling SpaceX.

SpaceX is both a supplier and a competitor with Anthropic. Both build AI tools and infrastructure but also have a business deal together. They are frenemies. More on this later.

Anthropic's growth rate is astounding—its revenue grew 1,300% on a year/year basis to $16.3 billion in the 1H of 2026 . But its spending on compute and infrastructure is also growing like mad—a liability. The company has at least $542-$567 billion in compute spending commitments, mostly through convertible bond and equity deals with partners.

Anthropic's $807 Billion AI Infrastructure Challenge

The spending is one of the more intriguing elements of Anthropic's business. To continue its business, Anthropic needs an enormous amount of compute from some of the largest companies in the world. Many of these companies are also competitors, showing how complex and dynamic the AI infrastructure market has become.

Anthropic's approach to capital spending for compute has been creative. Realistically, it requires hundreds of billions in compute, but it doesn't spend all that with cash because it has managed to push a lot of that forward with convertible debt and equity deals with its frenemies.

With this approach, it only showed a net loss of $80 billion in the first half of 2026 and only showed a $500 million charge in capex. Most of its $80 billion in net losses was non-cash accounting charges, leading many Anthropic bulls to celebrate low losses and an imminet arrival of profits. It consumed limited cash on capex because a lot of compute was purchased with forward agreements.

Yet, the bulls seem to dismiss hundreds of billions in balance-sheet liabilities going forward. If it were you and I, we might consider it a large liability. As mentioned, in total, these convertible equity commitments (a liability that must be paid) add up to $800 billion. Anthropic will have to pay for this in the future with either a growth in earnings or stock, or a combination (most likely). The most likely scenario discussed is that the company issue more shares as its suppliers sell their equity positions, resulting in share dilution. This will be an overhang on the stock.