Anthropic to spend $50 billion on US data center construction

Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) announced on Wednesday that it will spend $50 billion to build AI data centers in Texas and New York. The company says these data centers will be built with FluidStack, a technology that helps build large GPU clusters.

According to Anthropic, when these data centers come online in 2026, this investment will create 2,400 construction jobs and 800 permanent positions.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement, "We are getting closer to AI that can accelerate scientific discoveries and help solve complex problems in ways that were previously impossible."

He added, "Realizing this potential requires infrastructure that can support continued growth in this field. These centers will help us build more capable AI systems that can accelerate these breakthroughs and also create American jobs."

Anthropic stated that these data centers are essential to meet the demand of the "millions of businesses" using its cloud platform, while also allowing it to continue researching cutting-edge models.

The company stated that it will continue to prioritize "cost-effective, capital-efficient methods" to achieve the scale needed to meet its needs.

Anthropic stated that it currently serves over 300,000 business customers. The number of large accounts with revenue run rates exceeding $100,000 has also increased nearly sevenfold over the past year.

Wall Street analysts and investors have begun to question how AI companies like Anthropic will be able to afford to build billions of dollars worth of data centers around the world.

These concerns were clearly evident during AMD's financial analyst day on Tuesday, when analysts repeatedly asked CEO Lisa Su how customers like OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), which plans to spend over $1 trillion on data centers, would afford to build them.

However, Su countered this by saying that if there is sufficient demand for artificial intelligence, there will be enough cash available to pay for it.

"This is a very unique period in the AI ​​space, and we shouldn't be short-sighted by thinking, 'Will you see a profit in just a few quarters, or will people be interested in financing it?' If AI usage grows as we expect, I think financing will be abundant," Su added.

In addition to its plan to spend $50 billion on its own data centers, Anthropic recently signed agreements to use 1 million custom AI chips from Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and an additional 1 million custom chips from Amazon (AMZN).

Google and Amazon have also invested billions of dollars in Anthropic.