Amazon (AMZN): A Lower-Risk Way to Invest in Anthropic’s Potential
Anthropic could make its public-market debut as soon as November, and the IPO is likely to attract plenty of attention. But investors interested in the company don’t necessarily have to wait for shares to begin trading. Amazon (AMZN) already offers meaningful exposure to Anthropic, with considerably less dependence on the success of any single AI company.
Amazon began investing in Anthropic in 2023, initially committing $8 billion across multiple installments. It added another $5 billion investment in 2026 and has committed to invest as much as $20 billion more.
That gives Amazon a direct financial interest in Anthropic’s success. But the relationship goes much deeper than an equity investment.
Anthropic is also becoming an enormous Amazon Web Services customer. On April 20, the company announced plans to spend up to $100 billion over the next 10 years on AWS technologies to train and operate Claude, its AI model.
That creates an unusually attractive arrangement for Amazon. If Anthropic grows into one of the dominant AI companies, Amazon can benefit through both its ownership stake and the infrastructure spending flowing to AWS.
At the same time, Amazon doesn’t need Anthropic to emerge as the ultimate winner. AWS can host models and workloads from other companies as well. That gives Amazon exposure to Anthropic’s potential upside while spreading its risk across a much larger cloud business.
That distinction could become particularly important if Anthropic goes public in November. Newly public stocks can experience significant volatility, and Anthropic comes with additional uncertainties, including a lack of profitability, heavy capital requirements and intense competition among advanced AI models.
Amazon provides a more established alternative. Investors can participate in Anthropic’s growth without making their returns entirely dependent on the success of Claude or trying to navigate the potential volatility surrounding a high-profile IPO.
The stock trades around $250 per share and has a market capitalization of roughly $2.7 trillion. Its enormous size means Anthropic’s success is unlikely to move Amazon shares as dramatically as it could move Anthropic’s own stock. That’s the trade-off for the additional diversification.
But the relationship between the two companies is substantial. Amazon has already invested $13 billion in Anthropic since 2023, has committed to invest as much as another $20 billion, and could receive up to $100 billion in AWS spending from Anthropic over the coming decade.
With Anthropic potentially heading toward a November IPO, we think Amazon offers an interesting way to gain exposure before the debut while avoiding many of the risks that can come with buying a newly public company. And because AWS can benefit from the broader market regardless of which individual AI model ultimately comes out on top, Amazon gives investors more than one way for the investment thesis to work.
