Anthropic reportedly agreed to pay Google $200 billion over five years for cloud computing and chips.
It represents a change in strategy for Anthropic, which has been relatively parsimonious by hyperscaler standards, perhaps because it is feeling a compute pinch. It has also agreed to pay Amazon Web Services $100 billion over a decade, and Broadcom a further $63 billion by 2027.
Other AI giants are similarly spending aggressively: Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta all announced major capital expenditure increases last week, with total projected outlays for 2026 at around $725 billion, 77% up on the 2025 figure and above the highest estimates at the start of the year.