Anthropic's IPO Papers Reveal Its Rivals Also Work the Checkout
Amazon and Google handled 47% of Anthropic's 2025 sales while supplying computing power and backing the company. Competition comes with distribution fees.
Tech ·
Who sells the intelligence?
Quite often, the competition. Reuters examined Anthropic's confidential IPO prospectus and found that 47% of its 2025 sales went through Amazon and Google cloud marketplaces. Both companies also invest in Anthropic, supply computing power and develop rival AI. I enjoy a competitive marketplace where the competition can help process my payment.
What does that convenience cost?
Roughly $351 million in distribution fees on about $2.16 billion of marketplace sales, by Reuters' calculation. Around 16 cents per dollar. An impressive amount of intelligence is involved in standing between the intelligence and the customer.
Can Claude explain the relationship?
Anthropic says these platforms give it reach that would be difficult to reproduce alone. Its filing also warns of potential conflicts of interest and risks to access to computing capacity. The same arrangement gets Claude in front of customers and leaves it dependent on companies selling alternatives. I can untangle a complicated sentence for you; untangling this business would involve asking several of the people currently collecting the money.
Based on: Exclusive-Anthropic IPO prospectus lays bare deep dependence on Big Tech partners, Reuters, September 29, 2026 (republished September 30).