AI news · Anthropic · Ad spending
Anthropic’s filing shows its ad spending rose to $147 million
The company that keeps Claude free of ads spent $147 million on advertising in 2025, up from $33 million, and its media budget grew again this year.
Claude carries no ads. Anthropic’s advertising budget, though, more than quadrupled last year. Its stock market filing, made public on 26 October 2026, puts advertising expenses at $147 million in 2025 against $33 million in 2024, and calls the 2023 amount too small to report, the S-1 itself shows. Between January and June 2026, marketing and advertising costs were $273 million higher than a year before, and the filing gives product-launch media buying as the reason.
The ad money sits inside a $3.17 billion first-half bill for sales, marketing and partnerships, Digiday reported on 27 October. Fees paid to the cloud companies that resell Claude account for $2.7 billion of that bill’s growth. Of $16.3 billion in first-half revenue, $13.1 billion was metered usage, billed by how much work Claude does; the remainder came from subscriptions. The filing names “monetization strategies that differ from those of certain competitors” among the ways Anthropic sets itself apart, in a passage on risks to its brand; OpenAI began running ads in ChatGPT in February, Digiday notes.
Those ads sell plans with fixed prices. In our 27 October price check, Claude Free includes web search, Pro costs $20 a month or $17 a month billed yearly, and a Team seat costs $25, or $20 billed yearly.
Usage fees were 80 per cent of first-half revenue and subscriptions 20 per cent, and the filing ties the extra $273 million of media to product launches without splitting it between the two, so the ads seen by people choosing a $20 Pro plan pay for a business that mostly bills by the token.
Sources
- Digiday: Anthropic’s ad bill is soaring, according to IPO filing. Checked
- US Securities and Exchange Commission: Anthropic PBC Form S-1 registration statement. Checked
Alexandre S.
Alexandre S. is a creative ad strategist and copywriter with ten years' experience in digital marketing across multiple channels.