Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion on AI infrastructure. Pre-IPO perps barely blink.

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Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure in the coming years, according to the AI company’s IPO prospectus seen by Reuters.

The prospectus frames the spending as a bet that AI will change the global economy more than industrialization, electricity and the internet did.

Anthropic is a U.S.-based artificial intelligence firm that builds the Claude family of AI models. Its public listing is likely to come after the November U.S. midterm elections and could value the company at more than $2 trillion, Reuters reported. That is more than double the $965 billion valuation from its May funding round.

The spending plan comes despite heavy losses.

Anthropic posted a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. About $34 billion of that was an accounting charge tied to financing that could later convert into shares, not cash spent running the business. On an operating basis, excluding write-downs linked to past fundraising, the company lost more than $8 billion.

Revenue grew 12-fold last year to nearly $4.6 billion. Nearly a quarter of it came from just two customers, and the company warned that many of its largest clients are not locked into long-term contracts. Anthropic held $20.28 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2025.

Crypto traders barely reacted

Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual futures, which let traders bet on the company’s valuation before it lists, traded at $1,998 on Tuesday across major exchanges, down about 2% over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. The price remains about 10% below its Sept. 9 record of $2,211.

Each contract’s price tracks Anthropic’s expected valuation in trillions. A price of $1,998, therefore, means traders value the company at about $2 trillion, based on Binance’s pricing. That aligns with Reuters’ figure.

Twelve exchanges list Anthropic pre-IPO perpetuals, according to Coin Metrics. Open interest, or the dollar value of outstanding contracts, stood at over $100 million as of this writing. Binance accounts for over 30% of activity.

On leading decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, the Anthropic market run by Entropy had an open interest of $36 million.

None of these contracts confer any equity stake in Anthropic. They are synthetic derivatives that settle in cash and track the company’s implied valuation, not its share register.

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