Anthropic Has Locked In Over $600 Billion of Computing, More Than Intel Is Worth. It Still Wants More and That’s Big News for AMD.
Anthropic just committed a staggering sum to computing power before its IPO, and its appetite keeps growing even as losses mount. One chipmaker stands out as the biggest beneficiary, and its stock is already moving.
Ahead of its IPO, Anthropic has committed more than $600 billion to computing. That is more than the entire market value of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC | INTC Price Prediction), which stands at $484.7 billion. “Compute” means the chips, servers and data centers that train and run AI models. The filing is an S-1, the disclosure document a company files with regulators before it goes public. The Wall Street Journal first reported details from it on October 20, 2026. The filing itself has not been made public and reports are based on leaks.
Geiger Capital summed up the reaction on X:
“This is insane… Anthropic has $600B+ in future compute contracts, and they’re still saying they need more compute capacity than the market can provide.” (Geiger Capital on X)
Three totals are now going around. In late September, Reuters reported that a filing showed a $518 billion AI expansion, mostly tied to deals that cannot be canceled. Crypto Briefing’s latest report puts commitments above $600 billion. The Wall Street Journal, in a report cited by Bloomberg, said Anthropic may put $750 billion toward extra computing capacity over the next several years.
The first two figures describe signed commitments at different points in time. The third describes planned spending. Each measures something different, so they should be read separately and never added together.
What It Means for AMD
The business behind those contracts is growing fast. Crypto Briefing reported that Anthropic brought in $16.3 billion of revenue in the first half of 2026, and InvestingLive reported that revenue rose nearly 15-fold. Crypto Briefing also reported a first-half net loss of $80.7 billion, mostly from accounting charges. A loss driven by accounting charges is a different measure from cash burned: it brings down reported profit without draining the bank account dollar for dollar. Anthropic has signed up for computing bills far larger than its current revenue, counting on that revenue to keep climbing.
Compute providers and cloud partners sit on the other side of these commitments. CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) disclosed earlier this year that it signed a multi-year agreement with Anthropic. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), through Google, are longtime partners. Among chipmakers, the most material disclosed link goes to AMD (NASDAQ:AMD).
On its August 4, 2026 call, AMD said Anthropic will deploy up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 Series GPUs in Helios racks, starting with the first gigawatt in the first half of 2027. CEO Lisa Su named Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta as AMD’s “strategic anchor customers.” When asked about revenue per gigawatt, she said: “I think we’ve said double-digit billions. We’re still in that range.”
That demand is already showing up in AMD’s results. Second-quarter revenue reached $11.54 billion, up 50.1% year over year and ahead of the $11.31 billion consensus. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.66 beat expectations of $1.61. Data Center revenue rose 107% to $6.72 billion, now 58% of the total, and the unit earned $2.10 billion in operating income after a $155 million loss a year earlier.
AMD Shares Rebound After an AI-Trade Pullback
Shares rose roughly 5% after the August report. More recently they fell 6.32% between October 14 and October 20, from $570.82 to $534.74, while Barron’s reported cracks emerging in the AI trade. On the morning after the Anthropic reports, the stock was up 3.06% at $551.12, a 157.34% gain for the year so far.
Bull Case and the Risks That Could Derail It
The bull case rests on demand exceeding supply. Anthropic says it needs more compute than the market can provide, and AMD says customer pull for Helios is “very strong and tracking ahead of our initial forecast.” AMD expects Data Center revenue to more than double in 2027. It also has three key customers, so its growth does not hang on a single buyer. The AI infrastructure trade goes well beyond the GPU makers themselves (we featured seven of the suppliers powering, cooling, and networking these data centers in a free report).
The risk is concentrated in Anthropic’s balance sheet. Its commitments are hard to cancel, it is reporting losses, and it depends on an IPO and open capital markets. Ken Griffin said on October 20 that corporate America is “looking at their bills from Anthropic and OpenAI” to make sure the spending delivers productivity. If those bills stop paying off, deployments could slip. With AMD trading at a P/E of 201, much of that growth is already built into the price.
What to Watch Before Anthropic’s S-1 Goes Public
The next checkpoint is AMD’s third-quarter guidance of about $13 billion in revenue, plus or minus $300 million. Once Anthropic’s S-1 becomes public, look at three things: how large and how cancelable the commitments are, whether revenue keeps growing, and how much cash the business actually burns. A customer that has committed more than Intel’s entire market value to computing and still says it needs more gives AMD a source of demand that runs well into 2027.
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Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
