Anthropic's IPO filing reveals its strategy for keeping enterprise customers
In its filing for a public stock offering, US AI company Anthropic revealed that more than half of its largest customers use both the Claude platform and its own apps. The document also lays out risks, including relations with cloud partners.
US artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Monday, October 26, filed an S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as it prepares its first public stock offering. The document shows the company is building an ecosystem of linked products designed to keep business customers using it for longer. That matters because it shows what underpins Anthropic's revenue growth ahead of a stock market debut.
Customers and usage
More than half of customers spending at least $100,000 a year now use both the Claude platform and a first-party app such as Claude Code or Cowork. At the end of last year, the figure was about 30%. As of September 30, Anthropic counted more than 11,900 customers spending at least $100,000, more than 1,900 spending at least $1 million, and about 250 spending $10 million or more annually. Net revenue retention was about 900% at the end of the third quarter.
In the third quarter, the top-spending 5% of Claude Enterprise customers who used Claude Code spent about 20 times as much per month as the average enterprise user who did not use that coding tool.
Approach and partners
TechCrunch compares the model to Amazon's and Uber's: a company that starts with API access can later roll out Claude Code to its engineers and Cowork to a wider workforce. To encourage this, Anthropic uses its Applied AI team and recently set up a venture with Blackstone and other private equity firms, Ode with Anthropic, to embed engineers in client businesses. It also relies on cloud providers AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure; Anthropic holds the direct contract with customers and pays each provider a fee.
Risks
Revenue for the first half of 2026 reached $16.3 billion, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier. The filing nonetheless flags risks: Amazon, Google and Microsoft increasingly see Anthropic as a competitor and may prioritize their own needs, which could make it harder to secure computing capacity. Dependence on its largest customers is also cited as a risk. Anthropic did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.
