Anthropic's IPO filing, line by line: how the $900.9B compute figure breaks down, and what $84.6B covers

TL;DR Anthropic launched its IPO roadshow on November 10: 825,000,000 Class A shares at an expected $70.00 to $78.00, listing on Nasdaq as ANT.

The press has mostly repeated two big numbers, a raise of "more than $61 billion" and compute commitments of "about $900 billion." I read the filing itself (Amendment No. 2 to the S-1, filed with the SEC the same day) and the numbers decompose in ways the headlines do not show.

• The $900.9B commitment figure is five different things added together. Only $320.0B of it sits in the filing's fixed obligations table. $451.2B is leases that were signed but have not started yet.
• Anthropic itself receives $59.3B from the public shares at the midpoint, not $61B. The rest goes to selling stockholders. A $26.0B concurrent private placement brings the estimated net proceeds to $84.6B.
• Those $84.6B cover the $70.7B due in the next 12 months only 1.2 times. Counting cash already on hand, the cushion is about 3 times.
• The headline moved between filings: $895.4B on November 2, $900.9B on November 10.

Everything marked "my arithmetic" is a calculation from filed numbers at the $74.00 midpoint. This is analysis of a preliminary prospectus, not investment advice, and the price range can still change.

What exactly are the IPO terms?

The terms below come from Anthropic's roadshow announcement and the S-1/A No. 2. They match each other.

Two things here are easy to miss.

First, the buyers in the private placement are mostly suppliers: chip makers, a memory maker, a foundry and cloud providers. That is a circular structure worth noting, because some of the money raised will flow back to the same companies as compute payments. The filing does not say that in so many words, so treat it as my reading rather than a stated fact.

Second, the placement shares are Class N stock, sold at the IPO price but not registered in the offering.

How much does Anthropic actually raise?

The "$61 billion" figure is simple multiplication: 825M shares times $74 is $61.05B. But 23.6M of those shares belong to existing holders, and Anthropic receives nothing for them.

shares_total , shares_anth , shares_sell = 825_000_000 , 801_351_354 , 23_648_646
for p in ( 70 , 74 , 78 ) :
  print ( p , round ( shares_total * p / 1e9 , 2 ) , round ( shares_anth * p / 1e9 , 2 ) , round ( shares_sell * p / 1e9 , 2 ) )
# 70 57.75 56.09 1.66
# 74 61.05 59.30 1.75
# 78 64.35 62.51 1.84

At the midpoint Anthropic's own gross from the public shares is $59.30B, and the filing's dilution table agrees to the dollar ($59,300,000,196). Add the $26.0B placement and the gross is $85.3B.

The filing's estimate of net proceeds is $84.6B, which implies about $0.7B of discounts and expenses (my arithmetic; I did not find the discount percentage in the sections I read, so I am not judging whether that is high or low).

One more check on valuation. Press reports quote $1.26 trillion to $1.41 trillion. I could not reproduce that from the filed share count. Multiplying 13.09B shares by $70 to $78 gives $0.92 trillion to $1.02 trillion. The press figures presumably include options, restricted stock and other dilutive securities that I did not add up, so I would treat the valuation range as "reported, not reproduced."

Where does the $900.9B compute figure come from?

This is the part I found most useful to read slowly. The S-1 says Anthropic has entered into purchase commitments and leases with an aggregate committed spend of approximately $900.9 billion, substantially all for compute and infrastructure. The contractual obligations table in the same filing totals only $320.0B.

The gap is explained in a footnote, and when you add the footnote items back, the numbers close exactly:

Half of the headline is leases that have not commenced. The filing says they are generally expected to start between 2026 and 2028, with terms from under a year to 20 years and a weighted average of about 10 years. So the number is a long-dated lease stack, mostly data center capacity that is not yet built or delivered.

That matters for how to read "$900 billion": it is a ceiling on obligations over about two decades, not a bill due this year.

The filing also notes that about $451.6B is expected to be incurred before December 31, 2030, and substantially all of the remainder between 2031 and 2045. In addition there are agreements with no fixed dollar amount, which the filing excludes from the table. I have not seen those quantified in the primary text, so I would ignore any outlet that gives a total including them without citing a page.

For scale, the $3.4B gas generator order that the FT reported on November 8 (I covered it here) would be about 0.4% of this figure, if it is even counted in it. The filing does not itemize it.

Did the number change between filings?

Yes, and it is a small but real signal about how fast commitments are being added.

Some articles still carry the $895B figure because they were written off the earlier amendment. Check the date on whatever you read. I did not find an explanation in the filing for the specific $5.5B, so I will not guess at one.

Can the IPO money cover what is due soon?

The filing says about $70.7B of the commitments are due in the 12 months after September 30, 2026, of which about $4.2B relates to commitments with termination rights or conditions. Against that:

Cash and cash equivalents were $95.6B and short-term investments $36.3B, with another $14.8B available under the credit facility. I did not add the credit facility to the pro forma figure. I also did not subtract any burn since September 30, so the 3.1x is an upper bound.

Next to the money due soon sits the money coming in. Revenue was $33.2B in the nine months ended September 30, 2026, about $17.0B in the third quarter alone, and run-rate revenue was about $81B on October 31, up $10B from September 30. Compute and infrastructure expense was $18.8B for the nine months, which is 56.6% of revenue, down from 172.1% in the same period of 2025.

Here is the number I would watch. Annualizing nine-month compute expense gives about $25.1B a year. The $70.7B due in the next 12 months is about 2.8 times that (my arithmetic). Not all of that is operating expense, since part is lease and capacity payments, so this is a rough indicator rather than a forecast. But it says the cost base is expected to step up sharply within a year, and the next filings will show whether revenue keeps pace.

The S-1 itself says its revenue is primarily consumption-based and often not under long-term contracts, while the commitments run for years.

What about the $104 billion net loss?

The nine-month net loss was $104.0B, which looks alarming until you read the lines above it. Operating loss was $1.26B. The large number comes from a $94.3B change in the fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs, which is about 91% of the net loss.

The filing ties the accumulated deficit of $156.2B to the same effect, including $135.1B from fair-value changes driven by the rising enterprise valuation. In other words, the bigger the valuation, the larger the paper loss on its own convertible notes.

This is an accounting item rather than cash going out, but I am relying on the filing's description and have not modeled what happens to those instruments at the IPO.

When do the fixed payments actually arrive?

The obligations table gives the schedule for the fixed $320.0B, and it ramps hard. Spending in 2028 to 2030 averages about $45.8B a year before the $148.4B tail. The timing reflects delivery schedules as of September 30, and the filing warns that because much of the capacity has not been delivered, both timing and, in some cases, amounts may differ.

What should engineers and buyers take from this?

I am not a securities analyst, so I will keep this to the engineering-adjacent readings.

Compute is being bought on lease-length timelines. A 10-year weighted lease term for data center capacity is a very different instrument from renting GPUs by the hour. Capacity that is contracted today will be deployed through 2028, so near-term API capacity is not what these filings describe.

The pricing pressure runs both ways. A company with $900.9B of fixed-ish obligations and consumption-based revenue has every reason to protect utilization. That can mean aggressive pricing to fill capacity or tighter limits when demand outruns supply. Which one you see depends on utilization, and this filing cannot tell you.

Read the footnotes before quoting a headline number. A figure that is 35% table and 50% not-yet-started leases should not be compared to a cloud contract that is fully scheduled.

Sources and how I checked

• Anthropic, roadshow launch announcement (Nov 10, 2026)
• SEC EDGAR, Anthropic, PBC, Form S-1/A Amendment No. 2 (filed Nov 10, 2026) and Amendment No. 1 (filed Nov 2, 2026)

Secondary summaries were used only to find the filings. Every number above was matched to the filing text, and the components of $900.9B were summed to confirm they reconcile.

FAQ

How much money is Anthropic raising in its IPO?

At the $74.00 midpoint, Anthropic receives about $59.3B gross from 801,351,354 new Class A shares. A separate $26.0B private placement adds to that, and the filing estimates $84.6B in net proceeds for both combined. The total offering of 825M shares is $61.05B at the midpoint, but 23.6M shares are sold by existing holders.

What is the $900.9 billion in Anthropic's S-1?

It is the aggregate committed spend on purchase commitments and leases, substantially all for compute and infrastructure. It adds up from $320.0B of fixed obligations in the table, $451.2B of leases not yet commenced, $105.7B of commitments signed after September 30, and $24.0B of short-term minimums.

How much of the commitments is due in the next year?

About $70.7B in the 12 months following September 30, 2026, of which about $4.2B relates to commitments with termination rights or conditions. That was $69.8B in the previous amendment.

Why is the net loss so large if the operating loss is small?

For the nine months to September 30, 2026, the operating loss was $1.26B and the net loss $104.0B. About $94.3B came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs, a non-cash item linked to the rising valuation.

Who is buying in the private placement?

Google, NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC would together buy $26.0B of Class N stock at the IPO price, per the filing. At the midpoint, Google and NVIDIA are about $10.0B each.

Further reading

• Anthropic's $3.4B gas generator deal: what $2,000 per kW buys, and what the reports leave out
• Marvell is buying Lumentum for $115B: what the optical bet means for AI cluster power