Anthropic Commits $50 Billion to Build AI Data Centers in US

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bloomberg Intelligence

Episode: Anthropic Commits $50 Billion to Build AI Data Centers in US
Date: November 12, 2025
Hosts: Paul Sweeney & Caroline Hyde
Notable Guests: Emily Mason (Fintech & Crypto Reporter), Mary Ross Gilbert (Senior Equity Analyst, Retail)

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Overview

This episode dives deep into Anthropic’s massive $50 billion commitment to building AI data centers in the US, framing it within the broader trends of AI investment, infrastructure, and business models. The hosts also pivot to explore market skepticism about AI profitability, the ever-growing competition among tech giants, and discuss related trends in fintech and retail, providing listeners with a holistic sense of current movements in tech-driven industries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Anthropic’s $50 Billion US Data Center Commitment

[01:53 – 04:09]

• Contextualizing the Spend:
  • Caroline notes that, compared to Meta’s (Facebook’s) $600 billion capex plans, Anthropic’s $50 billion feels less staggering, but remains a seismic move for the AI industry.
  • Anthropic’s growth has historically relied on strategic partnerships, particularly investments and cloud infrastructure access from Google and Amazon.
    • “Anthropic has been a strategic partner to these cloud companies because they've been helping them build out their chip offering and they've been helping training models on the future generation of these vertically integrated companies.” – Caroline [02:25]
  • The move signals not only an infrastructure build-up but also Anthropic’s belief in the need for robust US-based AI capacity, echoing positions from OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

2. Anthropic’s Business Model, Enterprise Focus, and Funding

[03:21 – 04:21]

• Product Comparison & Market Fit:
  • Anthropic’s chatbot “Claude” is highlighted as being notably strong in enterprise and coding applications, differentiating it from ChatGPT’s massive consumer user base.
    • “They are really nailing the enterprise space… People love it in the enterprise and that really has been their winning formula.” – Caroline [03:29]
  • 300,000 business customers; $13B recently raised at a $183B valuation.
  • Anthropic, once considered more "asset-light," is now shifting toward heavy infrastructure investment.

3. AI Companies and Public Markets

[04:09 – 05:38]

• IPO Prospects:
  • Discussion around whether AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI will go public soon, and the trend of founders retaining controlling voting rights.
    • “Founders feel that … it’s a duty to allow everyday retail investors as well as deep-pocketed venture capitalists to benefit from their businesses.” – Caroline [04:21]
  • OpenAI’s unique structure (Sam Altman lacking significant equity) is cited as a complicating factor for future equity arrangements at Anthropic.

4. AI Investment: Sustainability, Profitability & Skepticism

[05:38 – 08:12]

• Market Skepticism:
  • The NASDAQ underperforming the Dow points to rising doubts about AI investments’ near-term profitability. Concerns focus on huge capex outlays and unclear financial returns.
    • “There’s a lot of nonstop investment. But then how do people see returns in the next year or two as opposed to 10 years down the road?” – Interviewer [05:38]
  • Critics like Michael Burry warn about depreciation and asset overvaluation.
  • However, fundamentals for chipmakers (Nvidia & AMD) and AI “accelerators” appear robust, with 5-year revenue guidance and impressive annual growth rates.
    • “Every time you question it … if AMD can prove out they’re building a clear line of sight on tens of billions of dollars of revenue, people will give them the benefit of the doubt.” – Caroline [07:22]
  • Morgan Stanley cautions, “a lot of things have to break right to generate returns on these investments.” – Paul Sweeney [07:39]

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5. Stablecoins & Circle Internet Group: Interest Rate Impact

[10:34 – 16:10]

Guest: Emily Mason, Bloomberg News

• USDC Revenue Model:
  • Circle, issuer of USDC stablecoin, derives most revenue from interest earned on cash and short-term Treasuries held as reserves.
    • “If interest rates go down, you know, that shows up in earnings and that causes some concern for investors and analysts.” – Emily Mason [11:10]
• Recent Performance and Diversification:
  • Stock down post-hype, due to both falling interest rates and revenue-sharing with partners like Coinbase.
  • Circle is experimenting with its own payments network and payout products to diversify revenue.
  • CEO Jeremy Allaire argues lower rates mean more economic activity and demand for stablecoins.
• Crypto-Fintech Intersections:
  • The evolving relationship: Fintech built sleek layers on traditional finance, while crypto seeks to, “rebuilding financial infrastructure with things like blockchains.” [13:22]
  • Regulatory compliance remains central to Circle’s narrative—positioning as “the suits in the room.”
    • “We are kind of like the suits in the room and we're going to be regulated and that's how we're going to go about doing business.” – Emily Mason [14:08]
• Stablecoin Demand Trends:
  • Use in trading, but also in practical payments—especially in countries with currency volatility or for global payroll.
  • “That's where demand for stablecoin is going to come from. I don't think it's like super tied to the trading necessarily.” – Emily Mason [15:24]

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6. Retail & Holiday Shopping Insights

[18:04 – 23:35]

Guest: Mary Ross Gilbert, Senior Equity Analyst (Retail)

• Holiday Outlook:
  • Apparel expected to be the top gift category this season.
  • Gen Z is notably cutting back (23% less spending), while Millennials plan only a slight reduction (1%).
    • “Gen Z is planning to cut back on their overall holiday spending by 23%. Millennials, just 1%.” – Mary Ross Gilbert [18:41]
  • Potential causes: tough job market for recent graduates.
• Retail Market Dynamics:
  • K-shaped economy: asset owners (stocks, real estate) are faring well, while low-income consumers struggle, reflected in credit card delinquency data.
  • Off-price retailers (TJ Maxx, Ross, Burlington) are performing strongly, especially with lower-income shoppers feeling inflation’s pinch.
• E-commerce Trends:
  • Online sales robust for most department stores, except Kohl’s.
  • Gen Z shows preference for in-store shopping, especially at Hollister, while Millennials tilt toward online buying.
    • “Millennials prefer to shop online. So 60% of their sales are being generated online versus in store.” – Mary Ross Gilbert [22:28]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tech Investment Scale:
  • “You go, oh, actually 50 billion doesn’t feel that much, right?” – Caroline, contextualizing Anthropic's spend vs. Meta [02:14]
• On AI’s Profit Challenge:
  • “There’s a lot of nonstop investment. But then how do people see returns in the next year or two as opposed to 10 years down the road?” – Interviewer [05:38]
• On Stablecoin & Fintech/TradFi Convergence:
  • “We are kind of like the suits in the room and we're going to be regulated and that's how we're going to go about doing business.” – Emily Mason [14:08]
• On Retailer Focus this Holiday:
  • "Apparel should be good... especially as apparel and accessories are top on gift lists." – Mary Ross Gilbert [18:41]

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Timestamps by Topic

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:53 | Introduce Anthropic’s $50B data center news | | 02:11 | Caroline contextualizes Anthropic’s role in AI infra, partners, motivations | | 03:21 | Discussion of Claude, Anthropic’s enterprise market success | | 04:09 | IPO prospects for major AI companies | | 05:38 | Market skepticism: AI profits & sustainability | | 07:29 | Ongoing investments & risk commentary from Wall Street | | 10:34 | Stablecoin/Fintech: Circle’s USDC and interest rates explained | | 13:22 | Fintech meets crypto: traditional and new rails converge | | 15:24 | Stablecoin demand drivers | | 18:04 | Retail sector: holiday spending, generational differences, e-commerce trends |

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Summary

This episode offers sharp, candid analysis of the tech and financial ecosystems as AI, fintech, and retail all undergo rapid change. The dialogue on Anthropic’s $50 billion data center investment serves as a springboard to discuss the sustainability and profit models of AI, contrasting asset-heavy and asset-light company strategies, and how the public markets may ultimately play a role in the resulting shakeout.

The fintech segment, highlighted by the discussion with Emily Mason, explains the interplay between declining interest rates, stablecoin revenues, and the need for fintechs to evolve beyond simple crypto-trading tools. Finally, the retail analyst segment captures the stratification in US consumer spending amid inflation and an evolving e-commerce landscape, underscoring both generational and economic divides.

For listeners seeking concise, on-point insights into AI infrastructure arms races, the realities of capital markets, or the next phase for fintech and consumer retail, this episode provides both breadth and depth with memorable commentary from industry specialists.

Transcript

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[Paul Sweeney]

What a time to be covering tech like you and Ed Ludlow do. Caroline. Every day there are major news items from major companies and just amazing amounts of dollars. Today Again, Anthropic commits $50 billion to build AI data centers in the U.S. how do you put it in context?

[Caroline]

I mean, we become a bit numb and then you look to some of the other whopping numbers, like the $600 billion that Mark Zuckerberg has said he's spending in capital expenditure and AI data centers. You go, oh, actually 50 billion doesn't feel that much right? But interestingly, Anthropic, what's interesting about this one is look, they have been reliant on on investment from strategics for their access to cloud. Google massive investor in Anthropic and with that comes access to cloud and to compute. So too has awb, Amazon and has been a real provider of chips in particular, remember? Really, Anthropic has been a strategic partner to these cloud companies because they've been helping them build out their chip offering and they've been helping training models on the future generation of these vertically integrated companies. But now they're saying, look, we think that the US needs to continue to build out its AI infrastructure. As you've heard from Sam Altman, who's already saying he's going to be spending trillions on data centers and all the capital expenditure that goes with it. Then of course we have the likes of Mark Zuckerberg all in on it as well. So it feels as though Dara Amadou, who was out of OpenAI came over and set up Anthropic to do it in a more cautious, humanity friendly way. He's now saying, look, us too, we need to put some infrastructure out here.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay, so OpenAI is a chat GPT as anthropic is to cloud. That's a chatbot that they use. How widely used is this cloud chat?

[Caroline]

They are really nailing the enterprise space. This is where they've managed to lead in particular when it comes to coding. So yes, they don't have 800 million weekly users in the same way that does, but people love it in the enterprise and that really has been their winning formula. They've been really rather profitable thus far, more profitable at least, or seeing more revenue growth than OpenAI has been seeing. Because OpenAI has been all about the spending, all about the reinvestment and in many ways anthropology, African seen as some sort of more asset like version of this. Now that's kind of casting that off a little bit. But they just raised $13 billion. They are valued $183 billion. That was back in September and they have 300,000 business customers. So they have been managing to show that, that the business model works.

[Paul Sweeney]

Is there any expectation, Caroline, that these companies may come public at some point down the line? Because I just think about the money they're spending and I know they, a lot of people want to throw money at them, but maybe even the public markets, are they talking about that?

[Caroline]

Well, Sam Altman has been saying, look, it's not, I can't give you a date, but clearly they were on a path in the next couple of years to going public. And that is the idea because many of these businesses, these founders feel that it's their, it's their duty, it's a duty to be able to allow the everyday retail investor as well as these very deep pocketed venture capitalists to benefit from their businesses and be able to take a Chunk in within that. So we're seeing that these companies are talking about going public. We've had it slightly less from the anthropics of this world, but I think certainly there's going to be a push that these companies can't remain private forever and these boatloads of cash that they need can't keep on coming from the same group of investors.

[Interviewer/Host]

My guess is when they do go public, you know, the founders will have a huge swath of the voting shares and everyone else won't. Kind of like the matters of the world.

[Paul Sweeney]

Yes, exactly. And what's interesting is we mentioned matter. They accessed the bond market just a couple of weeks ago to fund 30 billion. Yeah, just incredible.

[Caroline]

But remember, Sam Altman doesn't actually own any system significant equity and opening.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay.

[Caroline]

So how they would structure him to have voting shares is another thing entirely. They of course are owned by the overall charitable not for profit is yes, that comment in in control in some ways but and has shut stock of open air. But I don't know what the breakdown of shareholding is by the founders of Anthropic.

[Interviewer/Host]

I'm looking at the markets overall, Caroline, and for a second day the Dow is outperforming the NASDAQ 100. I don't know how many times you can say that over the past couple of years, but the Nasdaq under pressure and again it's this idea that, you know, the AI boom is now a little bit more in doubt, there's a little bit more skepticism and people are asking questions about, you know, is there a clear financial model for profitable AI? There's a lot of nonstop investment. But then how do people see returns in the next year or two years as opposed to 10 years down the road? How has that conversation unfolded in the tech sector?

[Caroline]

It's unfolding by having either side of the equation come on the Michael Burry's of this world saying no one's factoring in depreciation of chips. We think that this is ultimately overvalued in a bubble. But then we're going to have threadneed or come on and really start to say, look, the proof will be in the fundamentals, the proof will be in the earnings. We've just had a cracking set of numbers from most of the magnificent seven. We're still waiting on Nvidia AMD coming out once again showing that the total addressable market for they, their accelerators and more broadly the chips is going to be $1 trillion. They're showing that they're going to guide for not just two years, three years, but up to five years. They think that they can be attuning to about 35% revenue increases every single year. And we're seeing Kaga numbers coming in in the 80% field for an AI accelerator offering that Mi is really selling well. So I think that every time you question it and yes, you can look at the worry about the circular financing, the anxiety that a lot of these companies that were very asset light think matter used to be very asset light. And to your point, now we're starting to see them laden on debt. These things do fill people with some uncertainty. But if really the revenue taps got turned on, if AMD can prove out that they're building a clear line of sight on tens of billions of dollars of revenue, people will give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Interviewer/Host]

I think everyone's grown very accustomed to seeing the cash and short term investments line for all these big tech companies at like hundreds of billions of dollars. And, and that's not going to be the case that they're going to continue investing this much and spending this much.

[Paul Sweeney]

Yeah, even. And we saw, you know, Meta stock go down pretty precipitously today when when Mark Zuckerberg said they're going to step up their capex by that degree. So that was interesting to see too. A little bit of caution there. Morgan Stanley out with report recently. I just saw today saying basically, boy, a lot of things have to break right to generate returns on these investments. Just writ large on the industry. A lot of things really got to break right now.

[Interviewer/Host]

We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow with airplanes.

[Paul Sweeney]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

You know.

[Paul Sweeney]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

So getting to the airport structure and.

[Caroline]

All the things that actually need to work for us to be able to get the data centers up and running.

[Paul Sweeney]

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.

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[Caroline]

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I think I've done enough.

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[Mary Ross Gilbert]

And.

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[Interviewer/Host]

Circle Internet Group. It's the issuer of the second biggest stablecoin USDC. And the shares are tumbling today down about 8%. And this is on kind of what feels like a pretty pedestrian reason concern that lower interest rates will slow profits. I mean that's kind of unusual if you think, you know, cryptocurrency or crypto linked company with lower interest rates. Let's bring in Emily Mason. She is a Bloomberg News fintech and crypto reporter and she joins us now. So Emily, just explain to us the dynamic here, why lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve would be a concern for a company like Circle.

[Emily Mason]

Yeah, so Circle issues USDC and they that's a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and they maintain that peg by holding reserves in cash and short term Treasuries. They keep the yield from the Treasuries and that's kind of how they make money. And that's where most of their revenue comes from. So if interest rates go down, you know, that shows up in earnings and that causes some concern for investors and analysts.

[Paul Sweeney]

So what have their recent results been like?

[Emily Mason]

I mean, this is their second time reporting since going public. They benefited heavily from all the hype around stablecoin, especially before the Genius act was passed and their stock performed really well. It's kind of been down since their summer highs. And that's kind of because of the concern from the interest revenue, but also because of some of the distribution partners that they have. They have revenue sharing agreements with Coinbase for example, who helps distribute their coin.

[Interviewer/Host]

So if this company for now is kind of a proxy for a money market fund because its earnings track short term treasury yields, it must need to do more to diversify its revenue streams. What is it looking at?

[Emily Mason]

Yeah, that's what they're doing. And then if you talk to Jeremy Allaire, who's the CEO, he'll kind of say that lower interest rates are actually good for the company because it means that there's higher velocity of money, there's more investment, and then people want faster moving money like stablecoins. And they also might want to use products like their Circle payments network, which recently is experimenting with like a stablecoin payouts product which like helps people, can, helps people to pay out globally with usdc. And they're trying to move more USDC volume onto their own platform instead of working with distribution partners like Coinbase. And that kind of could help them as well. But they see the lower interest rates as a positive thing, like, and also the USD circulating supply is increasing very heavily as they add new partners. So that also kind of could potentially offset the lower interest rates.

[Paul Sweeney]

Emily, your beat is Fintech and crypto Reporter. Two things that didn't exist even just a handful of years ago. Talk to us about broadly the intersection of the growing crypto market and applications like FinTech.

[Emily Mason]

Yeah, I mean, I think what's kind of the most interesting right now is like fintech, when it came onto the scene was sort of like building very sleek interfaces on top of his existing financial infrastructure. And then crypto's pitch is much more sort of like rebuilding the financial infrastructure with things like blockchains. And now the conversation is kind of about bringing the traditional world and the traditional financial institute infrastructure together with crypto. Rails and Circle's really kind of sitting at the center of that and trying to bring stablecoin and like integrate that with how traditional markets work. And that's involves a coming together on both sides. Like traditional firms kind of have to upgrade and make their systems interoperable with, with crypto technology. And then crypto firms also have to kind of move into a regulated environment. And that's been something that Jeremy Allaire has talked about for a long time. Like he really thinks that crypto needs to be regulated and circle that's been a big part of their narrative is like we are kind of like the suits in the room and we're going to be regulated and that's how we're going to go about doing business.

[Interviewer/Host]

They're kind of the most trad fi of the defi world. In other words, if we want to get technical, this is going to be a dumb question, Emily, but we've seen how bitcoin and the rest of the crypto currencies had a pretty rough October. They're struggling to regain momentum. All these digital coins are not the same as stablecoins. But is that shift in sentiment and conviction on bitcoin and altcoins, especially from institutions, affecting demand at all for stablecoins or are those two just not linked?

[Emily Mason]

I mean stablecoin is used a lot of the times, like anytime there's a lot of trading happening in crypto like and in crypto tokens like stablecoins kind of benefit because they're used to like move in and out of those markets. The stablecoin, the whole point is that it's like a stable currency. It's pegged to the dollar, it's one for one. So the price of it really shouldn't be impacted at all by like crypto market movements.

[Interviewer/Host]

But does it, does demand affect it or does, sorry, does the spillover involve like demand waning for stablecoin or increasing for stablecoin?

[Emily Mason]

I think we're like the demand growth for stablecoin is going to come from is like it moving out of a tool for just for crypto trading. It's going to be like people in countries where the local currency is volatile wanting to hold stablecoin or people wanting to actually use it for payments or like stablecoin payouts. Like if you're a US based company and you're employing a bunch of people around the world who want to hold a stable currency like the dollar, the stablecoin is the best way to access it. Then you can pay them that way. Like that's where growth from, that's where demand for stablecoin is going to come from. I don't think it's like super tied to the trading necessarily. People use stablecoin to get in and out of crypto markets. So they might see more volume of trading activity is high, but their journeys are kind of becoming less linked.

[Paul Sweeney]

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.

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[Paul Sweeney]

All right, whether we like it or not, the holidays are upon. Scarlet Fu and Paul Sweeney live here in our Bloomberg and Eric the Broker studio streaming live on YouTube. And with the holidays upon us, that means shopping for retailers. It is obviously the most important time of the year kind of right now through year end. So we want to get a sense of how that's shaping up for the retailers out there. Mary Ross Gilbert, senior equity analyst. She covers the retail space for Bloomberg Intelligence. She's based in our Los Angeles office. Mary, thanks so much for joining us here. We're kind of right into November, getting into the thick of it here. How's the holiday shopping season shaping up? What are your companies saying?

[Mary Ross Gilbert]

Thank you, Paul. So if you look at how the holiday shopping is shaping up, I think it looks very positive. So I think we are going to see an increase. And particularly for apparel retailers, that's usually like the largest category that consumers, if you look at those that have been pulled by all the holiday surveys that have been conducted, including the National Retail Federation and they have over 800, over 8,8200 respondents in their surveys. And the other ones are pretty sizable, you know, relatively speaking, around 5,000. So they're showing that there's definitely a higher percentage of shoppers wanting apparel and accessories for gifts. So that should be good news for apparel. But Gen Z is planning to cut back on their overall holiday spending by their. That, you know, by 23% millennials. Just 1%.

[Paul Sweeney]

Wow. So the Gen Z, these are the younger folks, maybe tougher time finding a job, maybe, you know, student debt. Is that kind of the driver there?

[Mary Ross Gilbert]

Yeah, I think, I think that could be part of it. Yeah. It could be the job market situation that might be happening there because these are really like the 17 to 28 year olds.

[Paul Sweeney]

Okay.

[Mary Ross Gilbert]

We have been hearing some, you know, talk about some of these latest graduates, you know, having difficulty finding a job. I think it's just probably going to take longer because generally unemployment is still very low. And soon we'll be getting, you know, more data on that. But we're seeing resilience. If you look at the data so far with Bloomberg's second measure for apparel retailers and department stores and off price, we're seeing good sales coming in for the third quarter and they'll start reporting their numbers in the next few weeks. So I think we're off to a good start. And I think Black Friday sales are already happening. Macy's is out today with 50% off on their private label brand product and they expect to have other drops every week. So everyone focus on starting now with the promotions.

[Paul Sweeney]

So, Mary, you know, economists talk about a K shaped economy out there. Some consumers, maybe the ones that own assets like stocks and bonds and real estate doing more than good and kind of everybody else struggling a little bit, particularly with inflation. How does that get reflected in retail sales? Does it mean you just kind of, if you're an investor, look at, I don't know, the Amazon Target where I can get some deals.

[Mary Ross Gilbert]

Yeah. And that's actually what's happening. And that's why you see, let's say, pretty robust sales overall coming out of the off price. You know, so think of TJ Maxx Ross stores and Burlington stores and Burlington's at the very low end. If you look at credit card delinquencies or, you know, those rates and a lot of these companies that we're tracking represent the credit card holders for like department stores and for some select apparel brands such as Gap, et cetera. And then when you look at that data, delinquencies are Actually lower this year versus a year ago, but not for the very low income, which kind of speaks to what you're talking about. And inflation. Actually those are up in the teens, you know, for the very low income consumer. So think like under 50k.

[Paul Sweeney]

Yep, yep. How about E commerce? Mary? I know the pandemic folks are saying kind of pulled forward, maybe four or five years of share shift from bricks and mortar to digital. What's the E commerce growth story look like these days?

[Mary Ross Gilbert]

You know, econ growth is looking strong when we look at the data, like I said, for the third quarter that we're seeing from Bloomberg, second measure, it's showing actually online sales were stronger at the department stores, except for Kohl's, Kohl's online businesses. I mean not their online business, but actually their credit customer is, is shopping less, like in the double digits less. So that's kind of an issue for them. But generally we're seeing stronger pool with online sales there. Now there is also a delineation between the type of consumer. If it's Gen Z, they tend to prefer shopping more in store. And we see that with Abercrombie and Fitch's Hollister brand. So they are about 70% of their sales are generated online. And then it's the inverse when you look at their namesake brand, Abercrombie, because that consumer is. Those are millennials. And millennials prefer to shop online. So 60% of their sales are being generated online versus in store.

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