Anthropic Just Committed $35 Billion to Compute It Has Not Raised the Money For

Anthropic recently locked in a $35 billion deal with cloud provider Lambda to secure compute capacity, despite not having raised the necessary funds, according to Bloomberg. This move is part of a broader trend among AI companies seeking to secure compute power ahead of potential market fluctuations. NVIDIA, a key supplier to both Anthropic and Lambda, provided the take-or-pay commitment on a portion of the facility's capacity and earns rental revenue from the transaction.

This arrangement allows NVIDIA to book the contract as backlog and leverage it to underwrite the debt that funds the data center. The commitment also serves as collateral for lenders, as they will not finance a GPU fleet without a signed offtake. The agreement highlights the increasing reliance on such funding mechanisms, as private companies sign multi-year obligations against future funding.