Talk about return on investment. Amazon's bet on Anthropic looks like an enormous win, at least on paper.
The cloud giant disclosed on Friday that it holds $45.8 billion of convertible notes and $14.8 billion of nonvoting preferred stock in the AI startup. Taken together, the figures show that Amazon's Anthropic stake is now worth $60.6 billion.
Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic since late 2023, indicating a seven-fold increase in value. If borne out, that would rank among the most lucrative strategic technology investments the company has ever disclosed.
The two companies have a deep commercial tie-up. Anthropic has committed to buy 1 million of Amazon's Trainium chips, binding one of the leading AI labs closely to Amazon Web Services.
Anthropic last raised $13 billion in September at a $183 billion post-money valuation, following a $3.5 billion round in March that valued the company at $61.5 billion. The AI startup is in talks for another funding round that would push its value to $350 billion.
The convertible notes held by Amazon convert to preferred stock as Anthropic raises additional capital. So every time the startup closes a round, Amazon gets valuable new stock in one of the hottest AI companies on the planet.
Some of the upside has already flowed through to Amazon's earnings. Conversions in 2025 generated about $5.6 billion in recognized gains, and Amazon booked a further $7.2 billion upward adjustment to its "other income" in the third quarter as Anthropic's valuation climbed.
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the value of the company's Anthropic stake rose from $38.5 billion in the third quarter to $60.6 billion in the fourth. The company expects to book a further $15 billion gain in first-quarter "other income" as some of the notes convert to nonvoting preferred stock, the spokesperson added.
Amazon also disclosed that these valuations relied on "significant judgment." The company classified the convertible notes as "Level 3" assets, meaning their values are based on unobservable inputs and Amazon's own assumptions rather than market prices, the company disclosed.
That's common with stakes in startups, which don't have securities that trade regularly on liquid public markets. That's what IPOs are for — and Anthropic is reportedly eyeing a listing this year.
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