Anthropic commits $200 billion to Google Cloud over five years

According to a report by The Information, Anthropic has committed to spending roughly $200 billion with Google Cloud over the next five years.

The deal, which starts next year, is part of the agreement under which Google is providing the AI company with five gigawatts of server capacity. Neither company disclosed a dollar figure when they announced the partnership last month.

This single deal accounts for more than 40 percent of Google's total "revenue backlog" most recently disclosed to investors, according to The Information. Google's backlog of contractually committed future cloud revenue roughly doubled in the first quarter to over $460 billion. The cloud division grew 63 percent over the same period, which The Information attributes largely to the Anthropic API running on Google Cloud.

Two startups account for half the cloud boom

Together with OpenAI, Anthropic is responsible for roughly half of the $2 trillion in combined backlog at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle, the report says. At AWS, that figure jumped 49 percent in the first quarter to $364 billion. OpenAI increased its commitment there by $100 billion, while a separate Anthropic deal also worth $100 billion covers up to five gigawatts over ten years.

The numbers reveal just how much the AI boom depends on the spending plans of two money-losing companies. OpenAI expects to spend around $45 billion on servers this year, up from $17 billion in 2024, with most of that going to Microsoft. Anthropic projected over $20 billion for 2025 back in mid-December, triple what it spent the year before. After a revenue surge in the first quarter, the actual figure is likely higher. By 2029, Anthropic has budgeted a total of roughly $200 billion across Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, while OpenAI alone plans about $180 billion for 2029.

Whether these numbers actually pan out remains an open question. Both companies are basing their projections on 20- to 30-fold revenue growth by 2029. Oracle's stock has fallen 45 percent since September, after the company announced a $300 billion contract with OpenAI.

Cloud providers that resell AI models have an edge

The providers best positioned to benefit are those that also profit from reselling the models themselves. Microsoft will now keep 100 percent of Azure revenue generated by OpenAI models - previously, 20 percent went back to OpenAI. Google has an additional advantage: Anthropic runs on Google's in-house TPU chips, which deliver higher margins than renting out expensive Nvidia servers.