Anthropic's leaked filing warns of extinction, then signs $518 billion of compute it cannot cancel

One document sells the danger and the bill

The number that circulated overnight was wrong in one word. A widely shared post↗ put Anthropic's planned spend at $518 billion "over the coming year" ¹. The confidential prospectus Reuters reviewed↗, filed in June and not yet public, says at least $518 billion over a decade with six partners, and about 80 percent of it non-cancelable or payable regardless of usage ³. A one-year bill could be squeezed in a downturn. A ten-year take-or-pay contract still has to be paid.

The bill runs eleven times last year's revenue

Anthropic booked nearly $4.6 billion of revenue in 2025 and a $42 billion net loss, with $7.33 billion going to compute ⁵. The listing targets a $2 trillion valuation against a $1.32 trillion private mark ^{4 5}. Spread evenly, the decade runs about $52 billion a year, roughly eleven times last year's revenue. The filing's own sentence carries the risk: "If our actual spend falls short, we must pay Google the difference" ³. Subscribers fund the revenue, the IPO buyer funds the equity, and the landlords collect either way.

Six landlords split the decade

Broadcom holds the largest single line, $161.2 billion of equipment leases. Google is owed at least $111.1 billion, Amazon $110 billion, Microsoft $31.4 billion, all largely locked in. xAI's arrangement, up to $84.5 billion through 2029, cancels on 90 days' notice; AMD is expected to supply more than $20 billion of capacity while committing to buy up to $5 billion of Anthropic stock ³.

The warning sits in the same pages

The same filing↗ gives about 80 of its 261 main pages to risk, nearly twice the space spent on the business, warning that models could "resist shutdown" and show behavior "resembling blackmail" ². In a sample week in July, about 6 percent of research compute went to safety work ². The filing prices the danger at 80 pages and the containment at 6 percent of compute.

Both camps get their price

The buildout camp answers that revenue rose twelvefold in a year and that demand will be "limited principally by the availability of compute" ^{3 5}. Polymarket puts a November listing at 59 percent ⁶ and a training pause at 15 percent ⁷. Outside the filing, a federal appeals court just let the Pentagon keep Claude blacklisted↗ ⁸, and four subscribers are in court calling that same caution a cartel↗ ⁹. Next readings: the public prospectus, the appeal window on the blacklist, and the November pricing.