# 2025-10-10 This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services

**This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services**\
<https://www.wheresyouredat.com/p/this-is-how-much-anthropic-and-cursor-spend-on-aws>

Edward Zitron’s article provides an in-depth analysis of the massive costs Anthropic and its largest client, Cursor, incur running generative AI models on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Key takeaways include:

* **Anthropic’s AWS Spending**
  * 2024: $1.35 billion on AWS against an estimated $400–600 million in revenue (over 200% of revenue spent).
  * 2025 (Jan–Sept): $2.66 billion spent on AWS on $2.55 billion estimated revenue (\~104% of revenue spent).
  * AWS costs increase almost linearly with revenue, suggesting no path to profitability under current pricing.
  * Likely significant additional spending on Google Cloud, potentially equal to AWS spend.
* **Cursor’s AWS Spending**
  * Jan–Sept 2025: $69.99 million.
  * AWS bills exploded in June 2025 (from $6.19M to $12.67M) after Anthropic introduced **Priority Service Tiers**, which increased costs for cache-heavy AI coding workloads.
  * Cursor’s costs reflect the broader “Subprime AI Crisis,” where model providers raise prices on dependent startups while competing with them (e.g., Claude Code).
* **The Subprime AI Crisis**
  * Anthropic’s rent-seeking via Service Tiers shifted financial pressure onto startups like Cursor.
  * Anthropic simultaneously launched Claude Code, directly competing with Cursor.
  * Both Anthropic and OpenAI risk collapsing the market by driving up costs for any company building on their models.
* **Overall Implications**
  * Scaling generative AI is currently unprofitable; as revenue grows, compute costs rise faster.
  * Both Anthropic and Cursor face unsustainable burn rates.
  * Without major price increases—or breakthroughs in cost efficiency—AI-native companies risk financial collapse.

***

#### Mermaid Sequence Diagram

{% @mermaid/diagram content="sequenceDiagram
participant Anthropic
participant Cursor
participant AWS
participant GoogleCloud
participant Customers

```
Customers->>Cursor: Subscription & API revenue
Cursor->>Anthropic: Pays for Claude model usage
Cursor->>AWS: Pays for infrastructure & some Anthropic model access
Anthropic->>AWS: Massive monthly compute spend (>$500M by Sept 2025)
Anthropic->>GoogleCloud: Additional compute spend (unknown)
AWS-->>Anthropic: Priority compute & storage
Anthropic-->>Customers: Claude models (API & Claude Code)
Note over Anthropic,Cursor: Service Tier pricing increases costs for Cursor
Note over Anthropic: Revenue ~ AWS costs → No profitability path" %}
```

This illustrates the cycle of revenue and cost escalation, with AWS and likely Google Cloud absorbing nearly all operational revenue, while startup customers like Cursor suffer under increasing compute expenses.


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