Anthropic’s S-1 shows that research and development (R&D), not serving customers, uses most of the company’s compute: at least two-thirds of its chip spending goes to model training, research and internal use of Claude.

$8.95B on compute in the first half of 2026, but only $2.38B of its costs went to serving paying customers

Serving paying customers takes barely a quarter of that compute and already brings in far more revenue than it costs.

Those customers cost $2.38B to serve against $16.29B in revenue, leaving 85 cents per dollar, up from 12 cents a year earlier.

Because Anthropic buys most capacity 12 to 18 months ahead, surging demand lifted revenue per compute dollar from $0.40 in Q1 2025 to $2.08 in Q2 2026.