Anthropic Wants AI to Slow Down. Its IPO Shows the Cost of Scaling

Even after calling for a slowdown in the development of powerful artificial intelligence, Anthropic appears to be betting heavily on what the technology could become. 

In its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters, the AI company says it plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and infrastructure obligations in the coming years, a commitment that shows just how expensive its ambition is. 

But getting there is already costing the company billions, with the AI lab reporting a nearly $42 billion net loss in 2025, while its revenue grew 12-fold to nearly $4.6 billion. Its operating loss also widened sharply, reaching $8.06 billion, up from $2.98 billion in 2024, according to the prospectus. 

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The cost of building AI is rising 

With such numbers, one would expect a company whose operating loss is twice its revenue to stop spending more and look for a way to cut down the costs (at least that's what I would do). Still, the company's spending on AI is anything but slowing. 

Anthropic spent $7.33 billion on compute and infrastructure in 2025, roughly three times what it spent in 2024, which accounted for more than half of the company's $12.65 billion in total operating expenses last year. 

The spending reflects one of the central challenges facing AI companies: developing capable models requires enormous amounts of computing power, while deploying those models to customers creates another layer of infrastructure costs. 

OpenAI, Anthropic's rival, is spending on the same scale, as audited figures reported by the Financial Times show the ChatGPT maker spent about $19 billion on research and development in 2025, and nearly $6 billion on sales and marketing. 

A gap only investors can fill 

The prospectus shows how quickly Anthropic has expanded, but also how much it depends on outside money and might continue to. As of December 31, the company, as told by Reuters, has $20.28 billion in cash, which is about one twenty-fifth of the amount it plans to spend.