Anthropic Targets $518B AI Infrastructure Spend as Pre-IPO Perps Stay Calm

Anthropic is preparing to spend as much as $518 billion on cloud services, computing power and infrastructure over the coming years, according to the AI company’s IPO prospectus reviewed by Reuters. Despite the scale of the planned investment and the company’s substantial losses, its pre-IPO perpetual futures saw only limited movement on crypto exchanges.

The prospectus presents the spending strategy as a bet that artificial intelligence could reshape the global economy on a scale greater than previous technological transformations such as industrialization, electricity and the internet.

Anthropic is a U.S.-based AI company behind the Claude family of models. Reuters reported that the company’s public listing is expected after the November U.S. midterm elections and could value Anthropic at more than $2 trillion. That would be more than twice the $965 billion valuation assigned during its May funding round.

Heavy Spending Despite Large Losses

Anthropic’s aggressive infrastructure plans come as the company continues to report significant losses.

The company recorded a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. Around $34 billion of that figure came from an accounting charge associated with financing that could eventually be converted into equity rather than from cash used to operate the business.

Excluding write-downs connected to earlier fundraising, Anthropic’s operating loss was more than $8 billion.

Revenue nevertheless increased 12-fold during the year, reaching nearly $4.6 billion. Almost one-quarter of that revenue came from just two customers, while Anthropic cautioned that many of its biggest clients are not committed through long-term contracts.

The company ended 2025 with $20.28 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Limited Reaction From Crypto Traders

Anthropic’s pre-IPO perpetual futures, which allow traders to speculate on the company’s implied valuation before a public listing, were trading around $1,998 on Tuesday across major cryptocurrency exchanges, according to CoinMarketCap. The contracts were down roughly 2% over 24 hours and remained about 10% below their Sept. 9 record of $2,211.

The contracts are priced to reflect Anthropic’s expected valuation in trillions of dollars. Under Binance’s pricing mechanism, a contract at $1,998 implies a valuation of roughly $2 trillion, broadly matching the figure reported by Reuters.

Coin Metrics data shows that 12 exchanges offer Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contracts. Open interest, representing the total dollar value of outstanding positions, was above $100 million at the time of writing, with Binance accounting for more than 30% of trading activity.

On the leading decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, the Anthropic market operated by Entropy had about $36 million in open interest.

These contracts do not provide traders with ownership of Anthropic or any claim on its shares. Instead, they are cash-settled synthetic derivatives that follow the company’s implied valuation rather than its actual shareholder register.

The Anthropic market is also considerably smaller and less liquid than perpetual futures linked to major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, where open interest regularly reaches billions of dollars.

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