Anthropic strikes a $10 billion computing agreement with a newly established cloud startup just a week old.

      Anthropic has identified another source for computing power, this time partnering with a company that is barely established enough to have a logo. The AI developer has entered into a $10 billion, six-year agreement with Volta, a recently launched cloud startup, as reported by Bloomberg.

      This contract represents Volta’s flagship deal and adds one more name to Anthropic’s already extensive list of suppliers. It is the kind of arrangement that has become standard for a company with seemingly limitless demand for computing resources.

      Anthropic is now acquiring capacity from nearly every available source. Its largest investor, Amazon, has invested up to $25 billion in the company and provides a significant portion of its computing power, which is just the beginning of the list.

      The remaining suppliers are notable names in the industry. Anthropic secured its largest computing deal to date with Google and Broadcom as its run rate hit $30 billion, taking advantage of Google's TPUs. Meanwhile, AMD is investing $5 billion and deploying two gigawatts of GPUs to support Claude, while CoreWeave, Akamai, and even SpaceX have also committed to providing computing resources.

      Volta is not the only $10 billion partnership in the pipeline. Anthropic is also negotiating with Meta for a similarly sized compute agreement, highlighting the number of suppliers required to sustain a single cutting-edge lab.

      What distinguishes the Volta deal is the newness of the partner. Anthropic is allocating $10 billion over six years to a startup founded this year, which is valued at $2.4 billion and has only just emerged from stealth mode.

      Volta aims to make Nvidia’s chips more accessible beyond just the industry giants, receiving support from Andreessen Horowitz, Altimeter, Nvidia, and Michael Dell. The plan is to handle some of Anthropic’s capacity through the bitcoin miner Bitdeer, starting from a facility in Norway.

      For Volta, this deal serves as both validation and stability. Having a $10 billion anchor customer provides the fledgling startup with credibility and the cash flow needed for expansion.

      For Anthropic, diversifying its computing supply serves as a safeguard. No single supplier can fully meet its requirements, and over-reliance on any one provider, including its own backers, carries inherent risks.

      Diversifying also offers strategic advantages; a lab that can redistribute workloads among Amazon, Google, AMD, and now a startup is less constrained by any one provider in terms of pricing or priority.

      Anthropic has even considered manufacturing its own chips, an understandable move for a company that views computing capacity as too crucial to leave entirely to others.

      These arrangements also contribute to concerns that have accompanied the entire AI surge. Chipmakers and cloud providers increasingly fund their customers, creating an interconnected network that could amplify losses if demand falls short.

      The scale of these operations is immense. Anthropic’s computing commitments now reach into the tens of billions of dollars, based on the expectation that demand for Claude will continue to rise rapidly enough to justify such expenditures.

      The spending reflects its business trajectory. Anthropic’s revenue has surged as Claude has attracted enterprise clients, allowing them to commit to expenditures that would be unsustainable for a smaller company.

      However, committing $10 billion to a brand-new company carries risks as well. Volta still needs to develop and fulfill its offerings, and Anthropic is betting that a first-time operator can successfully perform at a level that established cloud providers find challenging.

      The deal also suggests where the current bottleneck lies. Anthropic is seeking not only chips but also the necessary power and locations to operate them, which aligns perfectly with what Volta, created by infrastructure financiers, is able to provide.

      For a company striving to keep Claude at the forefront, the calculation is straightforward. Capacity is the limiting factor, and Anthropic will pursue it wherever it can be found, even from a startup that did not exist a year prior.