Anthropic expects to pay at least $80 billion by 2029 to run its Claude AI on cloud servers from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, according to the startup's most optimistic recent projections. And these technology giants have more than one way to profit from Anthropic: if their customers purchase Anthropic’s AI services, the giants can also take a share of the revenue.

This revenue stream is growing rapidly. According to company disclosure information, Anthropic will only pay approximately US$1.3 million in AI sales share to cloud service providers in 2024. But according to "The Information" analysis of Anthropic's most optimistic sales and marketing spending forecasts (which include cloud service provider sharing) and past payment records, this amount is expected to rise to about $360 million last year, $1.9 billion this year, and $6.4 billion next year.

These cuts partly reflect how Anthropic incentivizes its cloud partners to promote its AI services to their own customers and make them available for their own use. For example, Microsoft has encouraged salespeople in its Azure cloud division to promote Anthropic's AI models and said such sales would count toward performance metrics in the same way as Microsoft's own software, OpenAI models.


This type of estimated share (also known as revenue share or partner profit share) is significant to Anthropic. According to the company's past financial disclosures, this fee accounted for approximately one-tenth of its total revenue during the same period.

Another person familiar with the matter revealed that about 50% of Anthropic’s gross profits from selling AI through Amazon channels went to Amazon. The gross profit refers to the revenue Anthropic earns from selling AI through Amazon, after deducting the cost of running Amazon's cloud servers.

A spokesperson for Amazon Cloud Technology (AWS) declined to comment on the gross profit sharing ratio, saying only: "AWS and Anthropic have established a unique partnership. We are Anthropic's main cloud service provider and main training partner. This cooperation is continuing to deepen as both parties work together to push the boundaries of AI technology."

Google typically takes a 20%–30% cut of the net revenue from partner software resales, after deducting infrastructure costs, according to a Google employee familiar with the agreement. It’s unclear exactly what percentage Google gets from reselling Anthropic AI services.

Microsoft became Anthropic's cloud provider in November and pledged to invest $5 billion in the company. It's unclear what percentage of gross profit or revenue share Anthropic pays to Microsoft.

Anthropic executives have said that cooperating with the three major cloud vendors at the same time gives it an advantage over OpenAI, people familiar with the matter said. OpenAI mainly sells AI through Microsoft and direct sales, while the three major cloud vendors can reach Anthropic's models to their massive enterprise customers.

Value to cloud vendors

For cloud service providers, Anthropic and OpenAI are benchmark AI customers that can attract other AI startups to use their services, and Anthropic's cloud business still has more shares up for grabs.

As of last summer, the majority of Anthric's revenue, expected to top $18 billion this year, came from selling AI directly to customers rather than reselling it through cloud providers, according to an analysis of its financial forecasts by The Information.

People familiar with the matter said that to support its direct sales business, Anthropic currently mainly uses AWS services. But in the future, the support costs of its direct sales business (first-party sales) may be shared between the three major cloud vendors and its own data centers.

Rival OpenAI will also take a cut from long-time backer Microsoft.

According to people familiar with the matter, OpenAI will pay 20% of total revenue to Microsoft; according to the recently renegotiated cooperation terms, the share will be more concentrated in the years before 2032 to mitigate the impact on OpenAI’s cash flow. The company expects to pay a total of more than $13 billion in royalties this year and next, mainly to Microsoft.

The sharing models of Anthropic and OpenAI follow the industry practice of cloud vendors charging commissions for reselling third-party products. For example, Microsoft gets paid when users purchase Databricks software through the Azure cloud.

Cloud vendors also profit from Anthropic in other ways: In addition to charging $80 billion in model running fees, Anthropic also has to pay for model training costs. The company expects this expenditure to total up to $100 billion by 2029. In addition to Nvidia chips, Anthropic uses both Amazon and Google's self-developed chips - AWS Trainium and Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).

By the end of last year, Anthropic no longer separately listed the amount of royalties it paid to cloud resale partners in some of its financial disclosures, but instead combined them with other sales and marketing expenses, a person familiar with the matter said.

According to the company's winter forecast, Anthropic's sales and marketing expenses will reach a maximum of $2.8 billion this year and rise to $9 billion next year. According to calculations by "The Information", the resale partner share is expected to be US$1.9 billion this year and US$6.4 billion next year.

In last summer's forecast, AI resale revenue was expected to be US$1.6 billion this year and approximately US$4.4 billion next year.