Amazon delivered a blowout first quarter in April, with net income nearly doubling and earnings per share crushing Wall Street forecasts by a wide margin, The Motley Fool reported.
A closer look at the results reveals an unusual driver behind much of that outperformance, one that has nothing to do with e-commerce, cloud computing, or advertising revenue.
The company recorded $16.8 billion in pre-tax gains from a single private holding: its stake in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude family of AI models.
That figure alone accounted for more than 40% of Amazon’s pre-tax income for the period, according to a Motley Fool analysis, and it may mark only the start of Anthropic’s story for shareholders.
Anthropic confidentially filed for an initial public offering on June 1, setting up what could become one of the largest listings in history.
How Amazon turned $8 billion into a potential $160 billion windfall
Amazon began investing in Anthropic during the third quarter of 2023, committing about $8 billion through a series of convertible note purchases that continued into late 2025.
As of an April company filing, Amazon carried the position at roughly $74.2 billion on paper, split between $42.2 billion in convertible notes and $32 billion in nonvoting preferred stock, Amazon’s first-quarter 10-Q showed.
That $74.2 billion figure was measured against Anthropic’s $380 billion Series G round from February 2026, a benchmark the startup’s current $965 billion private valuation has already eclipsed.
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Estimates derived from Amazon’s public filings place the ownership stake in the mid-to-high teens as a percentage, implying a position worth $135 billion to $160 billion at the current valuation, Fortune indicated.
Amazon has committed to invest up to $20 billion more in Anthropic, with an additional $5 billion deployed after the first quarter closed, the outlet confirmed.
Anthropic’s confidential IPO filing opens a new chapter
Anthropic’s filing with regulators arrived on the heels of a funding round that valued the company at $965 billion, with a public listing potentially coming as early as this fall, according to Fortune.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says Anthropic’s Trainium commitment validates AWS’s custom silicon strategy, CNBC reported.
Anthropic’s commitment to run its large language models on AWS Trainium for the next decade reflects the progress we’ve made together on custom silicon, as we continue delivering the technology and infrastructure our customers need to build with generative AI.
The company’s revenue growth has few precedents in the technology sector, with an annualized run rate now approaching $50 billion after sitting at roughly $4 billion just one year ago, Fortune confirmed.
A listing at $1 trillion or above would push Amazon’s estimated position well beyond its current range, and the forthcoming S-1 registration statement will replace current estimates with a precise ownership figure, according to Fortune.
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Amazon’s first-quarter earnings already reflect the Anthropic effect
The $16.8 billion in pre-tax gains Amazon recognized from its Anthropic investments in the first quarter included $12.3 billion from an upward revaluation of its holdings, Fortune reported.
Amazon attributed the markup to Anthropic’s Series G funding round and the conversion of some convertible notes into preferred stock, Fortune also said.
Those gains helped push Amazon’s net income to $30.3 billion for the quarter, or $2.78 per diluted share, compared with $17.1 billion and $1.59 per share a year earlier.
Analysts at TIKR noted that while Amazon’s operational performance was strong on its own, with operating income reaching a record $23.9 billion at a 13.1% margin, the headline earnings figure overstated the core business performance.
Commercial ties between Amazon and Anthropic extend beyond equity
The relationship between the two companies reaches well beyond a passive investment, with deep commercial commitments reinforcing the financial connection on both sides.
Anthropic has committed to spending more than $100 billion on Amazon’s proprietary chips and cloud infrastructure over the next decade, CNBC reported, a deal that effectively recirculates a large share of any capital the startup raises.
Amazon Web Services also resells Anthropic’s Claude models to enterprise customers through its Bedrock platform, creating a revenue relationship that flows in both directions.
AWS delivered $37.6 billion in revenue during the first quarter, a 28% year-over-year increase that represented its fastest growth rate in 15 quarters, Amazon’s earnings release noted.
What the Anthropic listing could mean for Amazon shareholders
Against Amazon’s current market capitalization of about $2.61 trillion, an Anthropic position valued at $150 billion would represent roughly 6% of the entire company’s worth.
That concentration means every significant move in Anthropic’s valuation has an outsized effect on Amazon’s overall financial profile and reported earnings.
The gains flowing from Anthropic remain paper values until a public listing assigns a market-tested price to the position, and private funding rounds can be far more generous than public markets.
Lockup periods will also likely prevent Amazon from converting its stake into cash immediately after any debut, and the blend of convertible notes with nonvoting preferred stock adds complexity that the Form S-1 will need to address.
Few corporate investments in recent memory have grown as rapidly or become as financially material as Amazon’s position in Anthropic, and the IPO this fall could turn what has been an accounting event into a defining moment for the stock.
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