This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Anthropic (ANTHRO) could hand over as much as $6.4 billion to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in 2027 alone under revenue sharing deals tied to its Claude AI models, a reminder that scaling AI is as much about distribution economics as it is about model performance.
The Information reports that Anthropic expects to spend at least $80 billion through 2029 just to run its AI on cloud infrastructure. On top of that, training costs could reach $100 billion over the same stretch. Revenue share payouts to cloud partners are projected at $1.9 billion in 2026 and $6.4 billion in 2027, up from about $360 million last year and only $1.3 million in 2024. For context, Anthropic has forecast revenue of as much as $18 billion in 2026, meaning these partner payouts could equal roughly 10% of total sales.
The split can be steep. Roughly 50% of Anthropic’s gross profits from AI sold via Amazon reportedly goes back to Amazon. Google typically takes 20% to 30% of net resale revenue, though its exact cut here is unclear. Microsoft, which pledged $5 billion to Anthropic, is actively pushing Claude through Azure sales channels.
