Trends

Frontier labs secure compute beyond the traditional hyperscalers

Compute and custom silicon · Apr 10 – Jul 17

Organizations

AnthropicBroadcomGoogleAmazon Web ServicesGoogle DeepMindSpaceX

Updates

  1. Jul 17

    Anthropic contracted 3.5 GW of Google TPUs coming online from 2027, as Broadcom agreed to co-develop future TPUs through 2031, and signed a 20-year, $19B, roughly 401 MW lease with TeraWulf, which sold its Texas joint-venture stake to focus on owned capacity.

    Anthropic signs a 3.5 GW Google TPU dealTeraWulf signs a $19B Anthropic lease

  2. May 8

    Anthropic took all of SpaceX's Colossus 1, 300+ MW and 220,000+ NVIDIA GPUs outside its hyperscaler deals, doubling Claude Code rate limits, and both sides floated multiple gigawatts of orbital compute.

    Anthropic takes all of SpaceX's Colossus 1

  3. Apr 25

    Anthropic committed $100B+ to AWS over ten years for up to 5 GW of Trainium capacity as Amazon invested another $5B, and Google DeepMind's Decoupled DiLoCo pre-trained a 12B model across four US regions on 0.84 Gbps instead of 198 Gbps.

    Anthropic and Amazon expand to 5 GWGoogle DeepMind's Decoupled DiLoCo

  4. Apr 10New

    Anthropic expanded its Google and Broadcom TPU commitment from 1 GW to 3.5 GW covering 2027 through 2031, as its run-rate revenue hit $30B after 58% month-over-month growth.

    Anthropic secures 3.5 GW of Google TPUs

Predictions

  1. Nov 2026

    At least two other frontier labs announce compute partnerships with non-traditional providers such as defense contractors, energy companies, or satellite operators as hyperscaler capacity approaches strategic saturation for the top labs. May 8

  2. Jan 2027

    Custom-ASIC and TPU commitments plus long-duration owned-capacity leases become the default posture for frontier labs, and multi-silicon strategies across TPU, Trainium, and GPU erode single-vendor accelerator dependence. Jul 17

  3. Apr 2027

    Vertically integrated hardware-model stacks deepen procurement lock-in, pushing independent inference providers into specialized niches or hyperscaler acquisition. Apr 10

  4. Apr 2028

    Hyperscaler custom silicon (Trainium, TPU, Maia) displaces spot Nvidia GPU procurement as frontier labs' primary training infrastructure, with asynchronous multi-datacenter training used to pool heterogeneous fleets. Apr 25