Better Offline

Exclusive: Here's How Much Anthropic Spends on AWS

105 snips
Oct 20, 2025
This episode reveals Anthropic's staggering AWS expenditures, totaling $1.35 billion in 2024. A detailed breakdown shows their costs nearly match revenue, raising questions about profitability for LLMs. The discussion touches on the implications of priority pricing tiers and significant monthly cost spikes. Critically, Ed challenges the sustainable growth narrative of AI companies, arguing against the viability of advertising and improved tech as solutions. He encourages a public discourse on the excessive funding in the AI sector and its real value versus costs.
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INSIGHT

Anthropic's Cloud Bills Match Revenue

  • Anthropic spent $1.35B on AWS in 2024 and $2.66B on AWS Jan–Sep 2025, roughly equaling its 2025 revenue.
  • Their AWS spend rose from $610M in Q1 to $1.225B in Q3 2025, showing runaway cloud costs.
ANECDOTE

Cursor's Costs Doubled After Pricing Changes

  • Cursor's AWS bill doubled from $6.2M in May 2025 to $12.6M in June 2025 after product/pricing changes.
  • Ed links that jump to Anthropic's new priority service tiers and timing of Claude Code's launch.
INSIGHT

Monthly Bills Spike Dramatically

  • Anthropic's monthly AWS bills can spike massively, e.g., $383.7M in August to $518.9M in September 2025.
  • Such spikes suggest fragile unit economics tied to particular user behaviors or product changes.
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