Stock Markets March 18, 2026

Anthropic Gains Dominant Share of New Enterprise AI Spending, Mizuho Flags Winners

Bank's TMT analyst highlights Anthropic's rapid adoption and the cloud and hardware suppliers likely to benefit as inference demand accelerates

By Derek Hwang MSFT
Anthropic Gains Dominant Share of New Enterprise AI Spending, Mizuho Flags Winners
MSFT

Customer data cited by Mizuho shows Anthropic capturing more than 73% of spending among companies that are buying AI tools for the first time, a rapid gain from a near-even split with OpenAI just 10 weeks earlier. Mizuho's Jordan Klein describes the shift as highly supportive for Amazon, which handles most of Anthropic's inference workloads, and lists several hardware and infrastructure names that could benefit as enterprise AI usage and spending rise.

Key Points

  • Anthropic now captures over 73% of spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time, per customer data cited by Mizuho.
  • Mizuho describes the rapid shift toward Anthropic as particularly positive for Amazon, which handles most of Anthropic's inference workloads, and identifies several hardware and infrastructure suppliers likely to benefit.
  • Rising inference demand is expected to drive hyperscaler capital expenditure and investments through 2027-2028, with potential increases in memory consumption and power constraints as adoption scales.

Anthropic has surged to capture a dominant portion of new enterprise AI budgets, accounting for over 73% of spending among firms acquiring AI tools for the first time, according to customer-level data referenced by Jordan Klein, Mizuho's TMT specialist.

Klein noted a rapid change in vendor preference: roughly 10 weeks earlier the split between Anthropic and OpenAI was about even, and as recently as early December 2025 OpenAI held a roughly 60/40 advantage. That shift toward Anthropic, Mizuho says, is "super bullish" for Amazon because the cloud giant executes most of Anthropic's inference processing.

In addition to Amazon, Klein identified a set of companies he expects to see upside as enterprise AI adoption expands. Marvell Technology, Astera Labs, Fabrinet and Credo Technology were singled out as potential beneficiaries in Mizuho's view.

Mizuho frames these developments as evidence that enterprise AI adoption is at a turning point. As usage grows and real value and return on investment materialize, Klein wrote that adoption is "inflecting higher." He emphasized Anthropic's strength with AI coding tools as a distinctive edge that supports higher engagement and monetization.

The bank also stressed that inference demand is picking up and will be a key driver of capital expenditure and investment by hyperscale cloud operators into 2027 and 2028. That investment wave, Mizuho argues, will support construction of new agentic systems and applications, including initiatives referenced as OpenClaw. The firm added that rising memory consumption and potential power limitations are material considerations as deployment scales up.

Klein further listed Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia, AMD, Micron Technology, Seagate Technology and Western Digital as companies positioned to gain from OpenAI's strategic emphasis on enterprise and coding-focused solutions. He described this repositioning as sensible and favorable for important suppliers across the stack.


Context and implications

While the data highlights a pronounced preference shift among first-time buyers toward Anthropic, Mizuho's analysis places particular emphasis on the downstream effects - from increased cloud compute demand to heightened hardware and memory requirements. The firm foresees these trends translating into multi-year capex cycles by hyperscalers and associated supplier demand.

Risks

  • Power constraints could become a bottleneck as enterprise AI adoption and inference workloads scale - this risk affects cloud providers and data center operators.
  • Rising memory consumption could create supply or cost pressures for memory and storage suppliers such as Micron, Seagate and Western Digital.
  • Shifts in vendor preference are rapid; the competitive mix between Anthropic and OpenAI changed materially over weeks, introducing uncertainty for suppliers and customers planning capacity and investments.

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