Anthropic’s sales, marketing and partnerships expense reached $5.5 billion in the nine months to 30 September 2026, up from $322 million a year earlier, according to the amended Form S-1 the company filed with the SEC on Monday, 2 November. That is about 17 times the prior-year figure, by our arithmetic.
The filing says the increase was “primarily driven by a $4.8 billion increase in fees paid to channel partners, reflecting the growth of our business”.
The key insight: Anthropic’s amended S-1 shows sales, marketing and partnerships expense of $5.5 billion in nine months, about 17 times a year earlier by our arithmetic; the filing attributes $4.8 billion of the increase to fees paid to channel partners.
The filing defines the line: sales, marketing and partnerships expenses “primarily consist of fees paid to channel partners and marketing and advertising costs, including media and public relations spend”. The filing does not name the channel partners in that passage.
The nine-month table puts the line at $5,529 million, against $322 million in the nine months to 30 September 2025, an increase of $5.2 billion or 1,617%. As a share of revenue it rose from 13% to 17%, the filing says.
By our arithmetic, the $4.8 billion rise in channel-partner fees is about 92% of the $5.2 billion increase in the line.
Anthropic’s quarterly sales, marketing and partnerships expense in millions of dollars (bars) and as a percentage of revenue (line), first quarter of 2025 to third quarter of 2026 (unaudited). Source: Anthropic PBC, Form S-1/A filed with the SEC on 2 November 2026.Animated: Anthropic sales, marketing and partnerships expense per quarter, first quarter of 2025 to third quarter of 2026, $ millions (unaudited). Source: Anthropic PBC, Form S-1/A, 2 November 2026.
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Quarter by Quarter
The quarterly table shows the expense at $24 million in the first quarter of 2025, $246 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, $1,033 million in the first quarter of 2026, $2,135 million in the second and $2,361 million in the third.
As a share of revenue, the same table shows 22% in the first quarter of 2026, 18% in the second and 14% in the third. The filing explains the decline: it was “primarily driven by a decrease in revenue generated from sales through channel partners as a percentage of total revenue and changes in the terms of our channel partner distribution arrangements”.
In the third quarter, the expense rose 11% from the second quarter while revenue rose 47%, from $11,555 million to $16,956 million, by our arithmetic from the quarterly table.
The Year Before
For the full year 2025, the filing shows the line at $568 million, up from $43 million in 2024. It says that increase was “primarily driven by a $341 million increase in fees paid to channel partners, reflecting the growth of our business, and a $170 million increase in marketing and advertising expenses”.
The company also states its expectation for the line: “We expect that sales, marketing, and partnerships expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of revenue depending on the timing of and spend on” marketing campaigns and on changes in its channel partner distribution arrangements, the filing says.
As we read the filing, most of the line is the cost of selling through other companies’ channels rather than advertising: the $4.8 billion rise in channel-partner fees is about 92% of the line’s $5.2 billion increase, by our arithmetic.
As we read the quarterly table, the cost grew more slowly than revenue after the first quarter of 2026: the line fell from 22% of revenue to 14% by the third quarter, which the filing ties to a smaller share of sales through channel partners and changed distribution terms.
Anthropic’s amended Form S-1
“primarily driven by a $4.8 billion increase in fees paid to channel partners, reflecting the growth of our business”
Three Implications
FOR INVESTORS The filing says the line may fluctuate as a percentage of revenue with changes in the terms of its channel partner distribution arrangements.
FOR CHANNEL PARTNERS The filing reports a $4.8 billion increase in fees paid to channel partners in the nine months to 30 September 2026.
FOR MARGIN WATCHERS The quarterly table shows the line at 14% of revenue in the third quarter of 2026, down from 22% in the first.
The passages we quote do not name the channel partners or give the fee rate per dollar of revenue sold through them. The passages we quote do not split the $5.5 billion between channel-partner fees and marketing spend beyond the $4.8 billion increase it cites. Quarterly figures are unaudited. The 17 times, 92%, 11% and 47% figures are our arithmetic.
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Anthropic’s amended S-1 shows sales, marketing and partnerships expense of $5.5 billion in the first nine months of 2026, up from $322 million, with the filing attributing most of the increase to $4.8 billion more in fees paid to channel partners. As a share of quarterly revenue, the line fell from 22% in the first quarter of 2026 to 14% in the third, which the filing ties to a smaller share of revenue sold through channel partners and changed distribution terms.
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A note on sourcing. All figures and quotations are from Anthropic’s amended Form S-1 filed with the SEC on 2 November 2026; quarterly figures are unaudited. The 17 times, 92%, 11% and 47% figures 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.
