Amazon and Alphabet Poised to Gain From Anthropic’s Upcoming IPO

Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude series, is aiming for an initial public offering in the later months of 2026.

Both Amazon and Alphabet reported massive gains tied to Anthropic in their second‑quarter earnings.

Amazon posted a $53.4 billion non‑operating gain, which the company said stemmed largely from its stake in Anthropic.

Alphabet recorded $99 billion in unrealized equity gains, also driven by its investment in the AI lab.

The differing ways the two hyperscalers work with Anthropic create distinct strategic advantages once the company lists publicly.

AWS revenue climbed to $42.2 billion, a 36.7 percent rise that marks its fastest growth in 18 quarters.

CEO Andy Jassy described Anthropic and OpenAI as “the two leading AI labs in the world.”

Both firms have signed multi‑year, multi‑gigawatt commitments to Amazon’s Trainium chips for model training.

Project Rainier, Anthropic’s internal training platform, runs on more than 500,000 Trainium2 chips to power Claude.

These commitments tie Anthropic’s compute workload tightly to AWS infrastructure.

Amazon’s chip business has surpassed a $25 billion run rate and is growing at triple‑digit percentages.

Jassy noted there is “a real chance” Amazon will begin selling Trainium chips outside its cloud.

A successful Anthropic IPO would give Amazon a concrete proof point to market Trainium to external customers.

Beyond the equity mark, Amazon benefits from years of contracted Trainium demand that the IPO could solidify.

Google Cloud revenue surged 82 percent to $24.77 billion, underscoring the platform’s rapid expansion.

Anthropic runs many of its workloads on Google’s Tensor Processing Units, keeping the startup linked to Alphabet’s hardware.

Sundar Pichai has highlighted Gemini, noting that nearly 90 percent of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise.

Alphabet recently launched Gemini 4 Argon, a model positioned as a direct competitor to Claude.

The public listing would turn Alphabet’s equity stake into a tradable asset that could be sold in the future.

Alphabet’s balance sheet shows pressure, having raised $49.6 billion in equity while its long‑term debt climbed from $46.5 billion to $98.2 billion.

A market‑determined valuation for Anthropic will set a new benchmark for the value of Alphabet’s holding.

If the IPO prompts Anthropic to shift more compute to TPUs, Alphabet could see increased demand for its hardware.

Alphabet’s stock has outperformed Amazon’s over the past year, rising 38.47 percent versus Amazon’s 12.51 percent.

Both companies reported negative free cash flow in the quarter, with Amazon at –$7.6 billion and Alphabet at –$5.86 billion.

The equity gains recorded are paper gains; actual cash will be required to fund data‑center expansion.

Data‑center power, cooling and networking suppliers stand to benefit from the additional capacity Anthropic will need as it scales.

Amazon’s “lion’s share of capacity in 27” is already reserved for Anthropic, according to Jassy.

That reservation gives Amazon a long‑term revenue stream tied directly to Anthropic’s growth trajectory.

Alphabet, while enjoying a larger unrealized gain, faces the decision of whether to retain or eventually divest its Anthropic stake.

Investors should monitor Anthropic’s compute allocation choices and its cash‑burn rate after the IPO.

The public price will determine how much value each hyperscaler can realize from its existing position.

In summary, Amazon’s exposure is deeper on the infrastructure side, whereas Alphabet’s advantage is more financial and competitive.

Why This Matters

The IPO will crystallize the monetary value of each hyperscaler’s stake