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How much Anthropic and Cursor spend on Amazon Web Services

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152 points isoprophlex | 9 comments | 20 Oct 25 15:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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floatrock ◴[20 Oct 25 15:28 UTC] No.45645042[source]▶
The buried lede:

Anthropic: "$2.66 billion on compute on an estimated $2.55 billion in revenue"

Cursor: "bills more than doubled from $6.2 million in May 2025 to $12.6 million in June 2025"

Clickthrough if you want the analysis and caveats

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Kuinox ◴[20 Oct 25 15:47 UTC] No.45645251[source]▶
I could find an ARR for Cursor of $500M. Why do they they in this article that Cursor is loosing with this spending number ?
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LetsGetTechnicl ◴[20 Oct 25 16:05 UTC] No.45645476[source]▶
Ed's mentioned ARR in previous articles and it's not a "generally accepted accounting principle". They cherry pick the highest monthly revenue number and multiply that by 12, but that's not their actual annual revenue.
replies(2): >>45645513 #>>45645578 #
dcre ◴[20 Oct 25 16:08 UTC] No.45645513[source]▶
"Cherry pick the highest" is misleading. If your revenue is growing 10% a month for a year straight and is not seasonal, picking any other than the most recent month to annualize would make no sense.
replies(2): >>45645733 #>>45645830 #
1. mossTechnician ◴[20 Oct 25 16:26 UTC] No.45645733[source]▶
If a company's revenue in January is $100 and it grows by 10% every month, the December revenue is $285. The year's revenue would be about $2,138, but ARR in December would be $3,423. That's 1.6x the actual revenue.

ARR could be a useful tool to help predict future revenue, but why not simply report on actual revenue and suggest it might increase in the next year? I have found the most articles to be unclear to the reader about what ARR actually represents.

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2. dcre ◴[20 Oct 25 16:44 UTC] No.45645963[source]▶
Why is the calendar year the relevant unit? If you insist on years, then if you consider the year from June to June, $2,138 would be misleading small.

The point of ARR is to give an up to date measure on a rapidly changing number. If you only report projected calendar year revenue, then on January 1 you switch from reporting 2025 annual revenue to 2026 projected revenue, a huge and confusing jump. Why not just report ARR every month? It's basically just a way of reporting monthly revenue — take the number you get and divide it by 12.

I am really skeptical that people are being bamboozled by this in some significant way. Zitron does far more confusing things with numbers in the name of critique.

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3. LetsGetTechnicl ◴[20 Oct 25 16:46 UTC] No.45646009[source]▶
Because that's a part of the generally accepted accounting principles: https://www.rightrev.com/gaap-revenue-vs-arr/

Nobody considers a year from June to June because that would be misleading.

replies(1): >>45646038 #
4. dcre ◴[20 Oct 25 16:48 UTC] No.45646038{3}[source]▶
That is an article explaining why ARR is useful and important despite not being the same thing as GAAP revenue.
5. mossTechnician ◴[20 Oct 25 16:48 UTC] No.45646042[source]▶
You're correct, ARRs can be both misleading and for any 12-month period (I just chose a year to simplify), but the problem is AI companies tend to only release their latest ARR, and only selectively, which I believe is misleading in the opposite direction.
6. OptionOfT ◴[20 Oct 25 16:54 UTC] No.45646150[source]▶
How can you talk about ARR if you only look at 1 year?
replies(1): >>45646193 #
7. datadrivenangel ◴[20 Oct 25 16:58 UTC] No.45646193[source]▶
It's useful for financial planning. Less useful for overall financial reporting given how volatile it is.
replies(1): >>45647486 #
8. OptionOfT ◴[20 Oct 25 18:37 UTC] No.45647486{3}[source]▶
I should've been more clear. How can you talk about ARR if you only have 1 year?

How do you know it's recurring? What data do you have (historic) that makes you believe the revenue will happen again?

Is this based on signed contracts etc so you have some guarantees?

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9. dcre ◴[20 Oct 25 20:19 UTC] No.45648783{4}[source]▶
The "annual" just means that the unit of time is a year. It doesn't mean that it is recurring annually. You can call it Annualized Monthly Recurring Revenue if it makes you feel better.