Anthropic Signs $35B Cloud Deal With Lambda

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TL;DR

Anthropic reportedly signed a $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda — five days after a reported $45 billion agreement with Nscale, and with its IPO prospectus reportedly expected to become public after Labor Day. OpenAI said its advertising business reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate about 200 days after ads launched in ChatGPT. And Shein priced its Hong Kong IPO at a valuation of about $26.5 billion, roughly a quarter of its 2022 private mark.

Anthropic reportedly signed a $35 billion cloud deal with Lambda

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Anthropic has signed a $35 billion cloud-computing agreement with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia. Lambda will serve Anthropic from a Texas data center that Hut 8, a bitcoin miner turned data-center developer, is building in Nueces County. Nvidia holds the lease on the facility and supplies the chips. Bloomberg also reported the deal.

It is the company's second reported compute agreement at this scale in five days. Anthropic reportedly signed a roughly $45 billion, six-year deal with Nscale on August 26 for capacity from a West Virginia facility expected to come online at the end of 2027. Nvidia sits on several sides of the Lambda arrangement: it is an investor in the cloud provider, holds the lease on the building, and supplies the chips inside it. That circularity has drawn attention across this year's AI infrastructure deals.

The timing gives the deal a second dimension. Anthropic's prospectus is reportedly expected to become public after Labor Day, ahead of a possible listing this fall at a reported valuation around $1.5 trillion. Once that document lands, multiyear compute commitments of this scale move from press reports to disclosures — set against whatever revenue and cost figures the company puts on the record. Secondary-market participants have historically had to rely substantially on reported or third-party information when assessing Anthropic. The prospectus would replace much of that with the company's own accounting.

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Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

For more company information, recent coverage, and available market data, visit Anthropic on Augment.

OpenAI said its ad business hit a $1 billion annualized run rate

OpenAI announced Monday that its advertising business has reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate, about 200 days after it began testing ads in ChatGPT in the US in February. Ads are now available in more than 40 countries, with self-service access rolling out across India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. They appear for free-tier and Go subscribers — the bulk of the roughly 1 billion people who use ChatGPT weekly.

The company framed the milestone as evidence of a diversified business model. OpenAI confidentially filed IPO paperwork in June, has set no public timeline, and completed a roughly $7 billion employee tender at an $852 billion valuation in August. The contrast with Anthropic is one of disclosure mode: one lab is reportedly weeks from opening its books in a prospectus, while the other releases selected metrics on its own schedule. The two companies differ in business mix, revenue scale, and capital structure, so the comparison only goes so far.

Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

📈 Data Point of the Day

$26.5 billion

That is the valuation at which Shein priced its Hong Kong IPO, per Reuters — raising about $1.74 billion, four years after the fast-fashion retailer raised private capital at a roughly $100 billion valuation. Shares fell about 7% in Monday's debut. Shein's path was unusual: New York and London listings derailed by regulators, and tariff pressure on its core business. The discount may not read across to other late-stage names. It is a recent example in which public-market pricing was materially below a prior private-round valuation.

Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

⚡ Quick Takes

The following financing rounds are included for market context only and are not recommendations or valuation opinions.

• ‍Polymarket is reportedly raising $1 billion at a $21 billion valuation in a round led by 1789 Capital — up from $15 billion in April.‍
• Nvidia plans to invest $3.5 billion in MediaTek through convertible bonds, as the Taiwanese chipmaker forecasts about $2 billion in AI chip revenue this year.‍
• The Pentagon launched ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government on its GenAI.mil platform, giving 3 million personnel access to versions of the two labs' models.‍
• Chinese AI chipmaker Enflame priced its Shanghai IPO to raise about $908 million, per Reuters — one more AI listing in a September queue that is filling on both sides of the Pacific.‍
• The EU designated ChatGPT a "very large online search engine" under the Digital Services Act, giving OpenAI four months to meet added obligations, with fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue for violations.

🎓 From the Manual

Roadshow

The series of meetings a company holds with institutional investors in the weeks before an IPO prices, often after its prospectus becomes public. Management presents the business and fields questions; bankers use the feedback to gauge demand and set the price range. Some companies now compress the format into a single investor day, which Anthropic is reportedly planning for mid-September.

👀 What We're Watching

Anthropic's public prospectus, reportedly expected after Labor Day. Per Reuters, citing The Information, the filing would put company-disclosed revenue and costs next to the compute commitments reported this month — and would show whatever lockup and secondary-sale structure the company lands on.

Clay's reported round at a $7 billion pre-money valuation. Axios reported the AI sales-software company is raising a Wellington-led round, up from the $5 billion mark set by an employee tender in January. Where it closes may show how a tender price relates to a full priced round eight months later.

SB Energy's IPO filing, reportedly expected as soon as this week. The Wall Street Journal reported, per draft IPO documents it reviewed, that the SoftBank-majority data-center company could raise $5 billion to $7 billion in a listing bankers are reportedly targeting for as soon as next month — and that it issued OpenAI warrants valued at about $5.5 billion to bring the company on as a tenant. The filing would put another AI-infrastructure name on the public market, with its OpenAI arrangement disclosed in detail.

Let's have a great week out there.
~Paul

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