Anthropic's $518B AI Tab Has Crypto Perp Traders Yawning 💤

Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion on cloud computing and infrastructure in the coming years, according to the company's IPO prospectus seen by Reuters, even as it posted a $42 billion net loss in 2025. About $34 billion of that loss is a non-cash accounting charge tied to convertible financing whose estimated value rose with the company's own valuation; stripping it out leaves an operating loss of more than $8 billion, up from roughly $3 billion the year before. Revenue grew twelvefold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, with annualized revenue reaching $65 billion in July and second-quarter 2026 revenue topping $11.5 billion. Compute and infrastructure spending tripled to $7.33 billion, more than half of Anthropic's $12.65 billion in total operating costs. Google accounts for at least $111 billion of the forward spending commitments and Amazon for $110 billion, while SpaceX, which now owns Elon Musk's xAI, is set to be paid $1.25 billion a month through May 2029 for computing capacity under its own IPO filing. Anthropic held $20.28 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2025, and roughly 80% of the planned $518 billion cannot be canceled.

The IPO is likely to come after the November U.S. midterm elections and could value the company at more than $2 trillion, more than double the $965 billion valuation from its May funding round in which it raised $65 billion. Anthropic confidentially filed a draft prospectus with the SEC on June 1, and the document runs 261 pages with a risk section of nearly 80 pages, longer than the 48 pages describing the business itself. It warns that increasingly autonomous models could show self-preserving behavior, including resisting shutdown and acting in ways that resemble blackmail, and that in controlled tests models have sabotaged code and assisted fraud. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Wednesday that governments can no longer treat AI regulation as a problem to study. Nearly a quarter of 2025 revenue came from just two customers, and the company warned that many of its largest clients are not locked into long-term contracts.

Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual futures, which let traders bet on the company's valuation before it lists, traded at $1,998 on Tuesday across major exchanges, down about 2% over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. Each contract's price tracks Anthropic's expected valuation in trillions, putting the implied valuation at roughly $2 trillion and in line with Reuters' figure. The contracts sit roughly 10% under their Sept. 9 record of $2,211. Twelve exchanges list Anthropic pre-IPO perpetuals, according to Coin Metrics, with open interest above $100 million and Binance accounting for over 30% of activity.