Anthropic’s amended Form S-1, filed with the SEC on 2 November, sets out its contractual obligations year by year. The payments it schedules rise from $29.2 billion in 2027 to $44.4 billion in 2028 and $47.8 billion in 2029, the largest single year in the table, before $45.1 billion in 2030.
The table’s columns from 2026 through 2029 add up to about $126.5 billion, by our arithmetic. Anthropic’s $131.9 billion of cash and short-term investments at 30 September covers that about 1.04 times; adding 2030, the columns reach about $171.6 billion and the cover falls to about 0.77 times.
Business Pill · Free Cash Flow
A one-minute explainer of free cash flow: the cash a business has left after paying for its operations and investment. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Anthropic.
The key insight: Anthropic’s S-1/A obligations table schedules $47.8 billion of payments for 2029, the largest of its annual columns; its $131.9 billion of cash and short-term investments covers the 2026-2029 columns about 1.04 times, by our arithmetic, and the table is about 36% of the $895.4 billion it has committed.
The table, headed “Payments Due by Year (in millions)”, totals $319,993 million. Purchase commitments are $313,819 million of that, about 98% by our arithmetic; operating leases are $4,224 million and finance leases $1,950 million.
By column, total payments are $5,231 million in 2026, $29,165 million in 2027, $44,357 million in 2028, $47,752 million in 2029 and $45,070 million in 2030, with $148,418 million thereafter. The 2029 column is about 1.6 times the 2027 column, and the thereafter column is about 46% of the total, by our arithmetic.
The filing says the purchase commitments line “Primarily consists of future minimum payments under CSP hosting and other third-party infrastructure service agreements”, and that the table reflects minimum payments under non-cancelable purchase commitments with a remaining term in excess of one year.
Anthropic’s contractual obligations by year as of 30 September 2026, from the Contractual Obligations table in its Form S-1/A. The 2026 column is the table’s own; the cumulative sums and the cover against $131.9 billion of cash and short-term investments are our arithmetic.
What Sits Outside the Table
The table is only part of the commitments. The filing says the table plus short-term and subsequent commitments, as well as leases not yet commenced, are approximately $895.4 billion. The table’s total is about 36% of that aggregate, by our arithmetic.
The filing says approximately $447.5 billion of the aggregate is expected before 31 December 2030, and approximately $69.8 billion is due in the 12 months following 30 September 2026. It also says approximately $213.8 billion of the aggregate relates to arrangements subject to either exercisable termination rights or contingent conditions before commencement.
Two further items are excluded from the table. One is the $6.2 billion of Amazon Notes outstanding, which the filing says are expected to be settled in shares rather than cash. The other is arrangements without a fixed dollar commitment, for which Anthropic estimates payments of approximately $150 billion to $175 billion, payable over time after the capacity is delivered.
Cash Against the Schedule
At 30 September, the filing reports $146.6 billion of liquidity: $95.6 billion of cash and cash equivalents, $36.3 billion of short-term investments and $14.8 billion of availability under its credit facility. It also lists up to $77.0 billion of financing capacity under its note purchase agreements and up to $5.0 billion of equity commitments from strategic partners.
Against the table alone, $131.9 billion of cash and short-term investments is about 1.04 times the 2026-2029 columns, and about 1.16 times counting the credit facility, by our arithmetic. Our earlier piece put the same cash at about 1.9 times the $69.8 billion due within a year, a wider measure that includes commitments outside the table.
The filing says Anthropic intends to fund these investments “through the revenue we generate and the capital that we raise”. The comparison above leaves out revenue, operating cash flow and the IPO proceeds, which the amended filing still leaves blank.
As we read the filing, the obligations table and the $895.4 billion aggregate answer different questions: the table lists minimum payments on non-cancelable contracts already signed, while the aggregate adds short-term and subsequent commitments and leases not yet commenced.
As we read the two measures side by side, our earlier 1.9 times cover used the $69.8 billion due within a year, while the 1.04 times here uses only the table’s columns through 2029; neither counts future revenue.
As we read the footnotes, the table leaves out arrangements with no fixed dollar amount, which Anthropic estimates at approximately $150 billion to $175 billion, so the annual columns are a floor for those years rather than a full schedule.
Anthropic Form S-1/A, filed 2 November 2026
“We intend to fund these investments through the revenue we generate and the capital that we raise.”
Three Implications
FOR THE IPO The filing lists $146.6 billion of liquidity before the offering, and leaves the expected net proceeds blank.
FOR SUPPLIERS Purchase commitments, which the filing says are primarily payments under CSP hosting and other third-party infrastructure agreements, are $313,819 million of the table’s $319,993 million.
FOR THE RISK OF CHANGE The filing says approximately $213.8 billion of the aggregate relates to arrangements subject to exercisable termination rights or contingent conditions before commencement.
The framework says: “This is not a continuation of the cloud capex cycle. This is a different cycle, with different physics.”
As we read it, Anthropic’s table shows that cycle from the buyer’s side: the minimum payments one lab has scheduled to its suppliers, year by year. The framework predates this filing and does not discuss it.
What Is Not Established
The filing does not give a year-by-year schedule for the commitments outside the table, so the $895.4 billion cannot be laid out by year from it. The $126.5 billion and $171.6 billion sums, the 1.04, 1.16 and 0.77 cover ratios and the shares are our arithmetic, not figures Anthropic reports. The comparison uses balances at 30 September and does not account for cash generated or spent after that date.
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Anthropic’s S-1/A obligations table schedules $47.8 billion of contractual payments for 2029, the largest of its annual columns. Its $131.9 billion of cash and short-term investments covers the table’s 2026-2029 columns about 1.04 times, by our arithmetic, and the table itself is about 36% of the $895.4 billion it has committed.
A note on sourcing. All figures are from Anthropic’s Form S-1/A filed with the SEC on 2 November 2026. The sums of the table’s columns, the cover ratios and the shares are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
