Anthropic Spends $2.7 Billion On Channel Partners Ahead Of IPO

Anthropic increased the fees paid to channel partners by a whopping $2.7 billion during the first half of 2026, up 2,540 percent, according to an Anthropic regulatory filing Monday. Here’s what you need to know.

Anthropic spent $2.7 billion on channel partners during the first six months of 2026, according to a regulatory filing Monday ahead of its highly anticipated IPO.

Anthropic’s sales, marketing and partnerships expenses for the first six months of 2026 increased by $3.2 billion—or 2,540 percent—compared to the first six months of 2025.

“The increase was primarily driven by a $2.7 billion increase in fees paid to channel partners, reflecting the growth of our business,” said Anthropic in its S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

San Francisco-based Anthropic’s sales, marketing and partnerships expenses amounted to a total of $3.17 billion for the first six months of 2026, ending on June 30, 2026, according to Anthropic’s filing.

This is compared to only $120 million in spending in that category for the first half of 2025 ending on June 30, 2025.

The additional $273 million increase in spending during the first half of 2026 was spent on marketing and advertising expenses, reflecting higher media spending to support product launches, Anthropic said.

Anthropic Expects Sales, Marketing, Partnerships Expenses ‘To Increase’

Anthropic’s sales, marketing and partnerships expenses “primarily consist of fees paid to channel partners” as well as marketing and advertising costs, including media and public relations spend.

The roughly $3 billion increase in the first half of 2026 represents a massive year-over-year growth increase with more on the way, Anthropic reports.

“We expect sales, marketing, and partnerships expenses to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to invest in activities to drive continued adoption and expanded usage of our models,” Anthropic said.

“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 changes in the terms of our channel partner distribution arrangements and the cost to deliver our intelligence service,” the firm said.

Anthropic did not respond to a CRN request for comment on specifics of the $2.7 billion channel partner spending by press time.

Sales, Marketing And Partnerships Expenses For 2025: $568 Million

For full year 2025, Anthropic spent $568 million on sales, marketing and partnerships expenses.

This represented an increase of $525 million, or 1,221 percent, compared to 2024.

“The increase was primarily driven by a $341 million increase in fees paid to channel partners, reflecting the growth of our business,” said Anthropic, regarding its 2025 expense increase.

The additional $170 million increase was spent on marketing and advertising to support product launches.

In 2024, Anthropic spent just $43 million in total on sales, marketing and partnerships.

Anthropic Channel Partner CEO: ‘We’re Investing In Each Other’

Val Henderson, CEO of Anthropic channel partner Caylent, is bullish about Anthropic’s channel spending and partnership.

“I actually do believe this partnership with Anthropic will get us to the next scale,” Henderson said. “We love working with Anthropic. … We’re investing in each other.”

Caylent is so invested in Anthropic that the Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider formed a dedicated Anthropic Consulting and Engineering (ACE) organization to drive sales.

“When we met with Anthropic earlier in the year, we had about 100 [Anthropic] certifications, and in that meeting, I said, ‘We want to continue to evolve and be the No. 1 Anthropic SI [system integrator] in the ecosystem," she said.

After diving deeper with Anthropic this year, Caylent now has over 1,300 Anthropic certifications.

“So that's one thing that I think has changed, is the dynamic of the partnership,” Henderson said. “And we have seen an increase in the customer intros that are coming from Anthropic and what that looks like, which has been incredible.”

4,000 Organizations Received Certs Via Claude Certification Program

In Monday's filing, Anthropic touted its ecosystem partnerships with channel partners, specifically global system integrators (GSIs) who have built dedicated Anthropic Claude practices.

“To accelerate the growth and capability of this ecosystem, in March 2026, we launched the Claude Partner Network, committing an initial $100 million in 2026 to fund partner training, technical certification, and joint market development with the firms that bring Claude into enterprise environments,” Anthropic said.

As of September 30, 2026, the network comprises over 150,000 practitioners across over 4,000 organizations who have received certifications through our Claude Certification Program.

$3.17 Billion Doesn’t Include Cloud Provider Expenses

It is key to note that Anthropic’s $3.17 billion in total expenses on sales, marketing and partnerships in the first half of 2026 does not include Anthropic’s spending on cloud services providers (CSPs) partners like Amazon or Google.

Anthropic reported $8.95 billion in compute and infrastructure operating expenses for the first half of 2026, up 283 percent year over year.

“The increase was driven by the delivery of committed compute throughout the first half of 2026 under our CSP arrangements. As our compute and infrastructure capacity grows, the associated compute and infrastructure expenses have increased accordingly,” Anthropic said.

Anthropic’s compute and infrastructure operating costs “primarily consist of compute fees paid to CSPs under committed and on-demand arrangements, including storage, networking, and connectivity, and related support costs, infrastructure costs associated with serving customer workloads through partner channels, colocation facility costs, equipment leases and committed power costs associated with our data center operations, and third-party application infrastructure software costs directly related to our compute operations,” Anthropic said.