This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
We recorded 20 claims from this post. 6 were checked against evidence. 14 can’t be checked. 8 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (20)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“While I don’t know about prepayment for services, I can confirm from a source with direct knowledge of billing that Anthropic spent $1.35 billion on Amazon Web Services in 2024, and has already spent $2.66 billion on Amazon Web Services through the end of September.”
Our reading: Anthropic spent $1.35 billion on AWS in 2024 and $2.66 billion through September 2025.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The underlying billing records are unavailable.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“I am guessing, because I do not know, but with $4.85 billion of other expenses to account for, it’s reasonable to believe Anthropic spent an amount similar to its AWS spend on Google Cloud.”
Our reading: Anthropic plausibly spent about as much on Google Cloud in 2024 as on AWS.
No horizon
Qualifier: a guess
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Anthropic and Amodei’s sudden willingness to take large swaths of capital from the Gulf States does not suggest that it’s not at least a little desperate for capital, especially given Anthropic has, according to Bloomberg, “recently held early funding talks with Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX” a month after raising $13 billion.”
Our reading: Anthropic's sudden willingness to take large amounts of Gulf State capital, along with its early funding talks with MGX a month after raising $13 billion, does not suggest that it is not at least a little desperate for capital.
No horizon
Qualifier: according to Bloomberg's report of early talks with MGX
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“In my opinion — and this is just my gut instinct — I believe that it is either significantly more expensive to run Anthropic than we know, or Anthropic’s leaked (and stated) revenue numbers are worse than we believe.”
Our reading: In his opinion, as a gut instinct, either Anthropic is significantly more expensive to run than is known, or its leaked and stated revenue numbers are worse than believed.
No horizon
Qualifier: in my opinion, just my gut instinct
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“I’m gonna be nice here and say that Anthropic made $600 million in 2024 — the higher end of The Information’s reporting — meaning that it spent around 226% of its revenue ($1.359 billion) on Amazon Web Services.”
Our reading: Assuming $600 million in revenue, Anthropic spent about 226% of its 2024 revenue on AWS.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This assessment preserves the stated revenue assumption.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Now, the jump in costs — $65.1 million or so between April and May — likely comes as a result of the final training for Sonnet and Opus 4, as well as, I imagine, some sort of testing to make sure Claude Code was ready to go.”
Our reading: Anthropic's roughly $65.1 million AWS cost jump from April to May 2025 likely came from final training of Sonnet and Opus 4 and Claude Code testing.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“And I was god damn right. Or, at least, it sure looks like I am. I’m hedging, forgive me. I cannot say for certain, but I see a pattern.”
Our reading: The Subprime AI Crisis he predicted, in which AI providers raise subsidized prices and customers pass them on, appears to be happening.
No horizon
Qualifier: cannot say for certain
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“It’s likely the June 2025 spike in revenue came from the introduction of service tiers, which specifically target prompt caching, increasing the amount of tokens you’re charged for as an enterprise customer based on the term of the contract, and your forecast usage.”
Our reading: Anthropic's June 2025 revenue spike likely came from introducing service tiers that raised charges on prompt caching.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Nevertheless, Anthropic’s costs exploded in the space of a month by $135.2 million (35%) - likely due to the fact that users, as I reported in mid-July, were costing it thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in compute, a problem it still faces to this day”
Our reading: Anthropic's costs rose by $135.2 million (35%) in a month, to September 2025, likely because some users were costing it thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in compute.
No horizon
Qualifier: likely
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“I have sat with these numbers for a great deal of time, and I can’t find any evidence that Anthropic has any path to profitability outside of aggressively increasing the prices on their customers to the point that its services will become untenable for consumers and enterprise customers alike.”
Our reading: After long study of the numbers, he cannot find any evidence that Anthropic has a path to profitability other than raising customer prices so aggressively that its services become untenable for consumers and enterprises.
No horizon
Qualifier: he can't find any evidence
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“As you can see, Cursor’s costs continue to balloon in July, and I am guessing it’s because of the Service Tiers situation — which, I believe, indirectly resulted in Cursor pushing more users to models that it runs on Amazon’s infrastructure.”
Our reading: He guesses that Cursor's AWS costs kept ballooning in July 2025 because of the Service Tiers situation, which he believes indirectly led Cursor to push more users to models it runs on Amazon's infrastructure.
No horizon
Qualifier: I am guessing
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“When I wrote that Anthropic and OpenAI had begun the Subprime AI Crisis back in July, I assumed that the increase in costs was burdensome, but having the information from its AWS bills, it seems that Anthropic’s actions directly caused Cursor’s costs to explode by over 100%.”
Our reading: Anthropic's actions appear to have directly caused Cursor's costs to rise by over 100%.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It’s very difficult to see Service Tiers as anything other than an aggressive rent-seeking maneuver.”
Our reading: It is very difficult to see Anthropic's Service Tiers as anything other than an aggressive rent-seeking maneuver.
No horizon
Qualifier: very difficult to see as anything other than
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“What I believe happened to Cursor will likely happen to every AI-native company, because in a very real sense, Anthropic’s products are a wrapper for its own models, except it only has to pay the (unprofitable) costs of running them on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.”
Our reading: Every AI-native company will likely suffer what happened to Cursor: price increases from model providers that also compete with it.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“As a result, both OpenAI and Anthropic can (and may very well!) devour the market of any company that builds on top of their models.”
Our reading: OpenAI and Anthropic may take over the markets of companies that build on their models.
No horizon
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“I believe that we’re going to see multiple price increases on AI-native companies in the next few months.”
Our reading: Within a few months of 2025-10-20, AI-native companies (products built on top of AI models) will face multiple price increases.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: This record does not assess whether model providers changed their prices after October 2025.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Based on what I have been party to, the more successful Anthropic becomes, the more its services cost.”
Our reading: Based on what he has been party to, the more successful Anthropic becomes, the more its services cost.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The packet lacks independent, comparable AWS cash-payment records and matched realized revenue for the observation period.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“The cost of inference is clearly increasing for customers, but based on its escalating monthly costs, the cost of inference appears to be high for Anthropic too, though it’s impossible to tell how much of its compute is based on training versus running inference.”
Our reading: Inference costs are rising for customers and appear high for Anthropic as well.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Flat token tariffs do not rule out higher bills caused by reduced allowances or changed workloads.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Conditional forecast
“In any case, these costs seem to increase with the amount of money Anthropic makes, meaning that the current pricing of both subscriptions and API access seems unprofitable, and must increase dramatically — from my calculations, a 100% price increase might work, but good luck retaining every single customer and their customers too! — for this company to ever become sustainable.”
Our reading: Because Anthropic's costs seem to rise with its revenue, its subscription and API pricing seems unprofitable and must increase dramatically for the company ever to become sustainable; by his calculations a 100% increase might work.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Only if: for this company to ever become sustainable
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“I’m tired that so many people have tried to pretend there’s a justification for burning billions of dollars every year, clinging to empty tropes about how this is just like Uber or Amazon Web Services, when Anthropic has built something far more mediocre.”
Our reading: Claims that Anthropic's billions in annual burn are justified by comparisons to Uber or AWS are empty tropes, because Anthropic has built something far more mediocre.
No horizon
Held from this post (8)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- Attribution is uncertain
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: He doesn't think people would pay the dramatically higher prices Anthropic would need, and he thinks the numbers show a company bleeding out from costs that escalate as its user base grows.
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: He thinks Claude Code and its new rates are a big part of Anthropic's roughly $83 million revenue increase between June and July 2025.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: Based only on its AWS data, Anthropic spends a remarkable amount on AWS and its costs seem to escalate rapidly as it grows.
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: He believes the rise in Cursor's costs from $6.19 million in May 2025 to $12.67 million in June 2025 was a direct result of Anthropic's sudden and aggressive cost increases.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: Anthropic's actual 2024 compute costs are likely significantly higher than previously reported, with a large share going to Google Cloud.
- The two reviews read the claim differently