Google’s $50B Cloud Deal Just Snatched Anthropic From Amazon’s Arms… Custody Battle Beings

It’s the oldest startup story in the book… one partner codes, the other cuts checks so big they come with carbon footprints. That’s Google and Anthropic right now.

The two just inked a “tens of billions” cloud deal that gives Anthropic access to one million of Google’s custom-built TPUs. (If you’re not familiar with TPUs, they’re essentially GPUs optimized for deep learning). More importantly, it's the largest TPU commitment Google’s ever made and will add more than a gigawatt of compute capacity by 2026.

Anthropic’s no slouch here. They’re now raking in a $7 billion revenue run rate, with Claude (their AI brainchild) powering more than 300,000 businesses… a 300x jump in just two years. Their coding assistant, Claude Code, hit $500 million in annualized revenue after two months. Which is wild considering most startups can’t hit $500 in their Stripe account after six. So wipe that smug smirk off your face, Sam… you’re not the only game in town anymore.

But the situation gets a little complicated. You see, Google’s not Anthropic’s only sugar daddy. Amazon has already funneled $8 billion into the company and built a custom supercomputer for them called Project Rainier. Think of it as a very expensive custody arrangement… Anthropic lives with AWS but spends weekends at Google’s house.

Still, Google’s deal stands out because of sheer scale. A 1-gigawatt data center can cost upwards of $50 billion… and Anthropic just committed to one powered almost entirely by Google’s TPUs.

(Source: Marketwatch)

While OpenAI’s out here teasing a 33-gigawatt “Stargate” complex, Anthropic’s taking a quieter route. And it seems to be working. Their multi-cloud strategy (splitting workloads between Google’s TPUs, Amazon’s Trainium, and Nvidia’s GPUs) means they can optimize for price, power, and speed.

Or as one insider put it: “Every dollar of compute goes further under this model.” Proving that the saying “you get what you pay for” isn’t always true. With that said, the real winner here might be Google. The company gets bragging rights, a deeper Anthropic partnership, and proof its chips can compete with Nvidia’s iron grip on AI training.

AI enthusiasts took note… Google stock popped 3% on the news, while Amazon’s slipped as Wall Street digested the fact that Anthropic’s next billion-dollar cloud bill is going to Sundar, not Seattle. (Jeff probably threw a dumbbell through his yacht gym window… in Italy).

Meanwhile, Anthropic just raised $13 billion, hitting a valuation near $183 billion… pretty impressive for a company started by OpenAI defectors who just wanted to “do AI right.”

So yeah, the AI power couples are officially nesting:

Google + Anthropic = “Efficiency is sexy.”

Amazon + Anthropic = “Hardware custody battle.”

OpenAI + Microsoft = “Toxic but still together.”

By the time 2026 rolls around, Anthropic’s power bill will have its own line item in the federal budget.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Google and Microsoft as mentioned in the article.