Rapid customer adoption at Anthropic has lifted the startup’s annualized revenue run rate (ARR) to above $19 billion, a development that Bank of America analysts argue could strengthen Amazon’s near-term cloud revenue trajectory if Anthropic relies heavily on Amazon Web Services for infrastructure.
Bank of America cites a marked acceleration in Anthropic’s ARR, which the firm notes has increased from about $17 billion year-over-year and by $10 billion relative to the end of 2025. The bank points to both enterprise and consumer engagement with Anthropic’s suite of models and its agent-focused developer tool, Claude Code, as primary drivers of the increase.
Analyst Justin Post highlighted the role of Anthropic’s February release of Opus 4.6. The model is described by the company as its most advanced to date, capable of sustaining agentic tasks for longer durations, operating more reliably in larger codebases, and offering improved capabilities for reviewing and debugging code. Post suggests these technical enhancements likely supported the uptick in adoption.
Consumer metrics reported by Anthropic also show strong momentum. The company has said that Claude’s free active user base has grown by more than 60 percent, while daily signups have quadrupled since January. BofA notes that Anthropic’s expansion appears not to have dampened prospects for peers, pointing to OpenAI’s recent upward revision of its medium-term revenue outlook as evidence that competitors can concurrently expand.
BofA examines the implications for AWS by tracking Anthropic’s ARR movement from roughly $9 billion in December to $19 billion by March, a roughly $10 billion increase over just more than two months. Post estimates that pace could imply a quarterly revenue increase for Anthropic of more than $2.5 billion. If a significant portion of Anthropic’s compute and other workloads run on AWS, Post writes there is an opportunity for up to a $1 billion quarter-over-quarter lift in 1Q AWS revenue attributable to Anthropic. That figure would be above BofA’s broader estimate of around $900 million in total quarter-over-quarter AWS revenue growth for the period.
The bank also flags rising payments to hyperscalers tied to Anthropic’s distribution arrangements. Citing recent reports, BofA notes that Anthropic may pay up to $6.4 billion to hyperscale cloud providers in 2026, up from $1.9 billion in 2025. Post says he would expect that estimate to move higher given the latest demand trends.
Beyond Anthropic-specific flows, BofA sees the broader surge in AI workload demand as a tailwind for AWS. Amazon is reportedly planning to double AWS power capacity through 2027, and the bank suggests that stronger than-expected usage could allow AWS to monetize additional capacity more quickly than consensus forecasts anticipate.
On the basis of these factors, BofA reiterated its Buy rating on Amazon shares. The firm’s analysis ties Anthropic’s ARR growth, potential hyperscaler payments, and Amazon’s capacity plans into a case for upside to AWS revenue if Anthropic chooses AWS at scale for its infrastructure needs.
Contextual note: The analysis centers on the interplay between a rapidly growing AI vendor and the cloud providers that host large-scale AI workloads. The potential revenue impact for AWS depends on the distribution of Anthropic’s infrastructure usage across hyperscalers and on the pace at which Anthropic’s ARR continues to grow.