Anthropic IPO 招股书披露客户留存策略：打造跨产品生态，深度绑定企业大客户

Anthropic 正在打造类似于亚马逊（Amazon）和优步（Uber）等科技巨头用以构筑极高用户粘性的跨产品生态系统，而其发布的 S-1 招股说明书 表明这一策略正在奏效。目前，年支出至少 10 万美元的客户中，有超过半数同时使用 Claude 平台以及 Claude Code 或 Cowork 等第一方应用程序，而去年年底这一比例约为 30%。

“企业客户采用我们产品的速度与深度，强有力地证明了 Claude 在 AI 前沿领域的领先地位，”这份于周一向美国证券交易委员会（SEC）递交的文件中写道。

截至 9 月 30 日，Anthropic 记录了超过 11,900 家年支出至少 10 万美元的客户；超过 1,900 家年支出在 100 万美元以上的客户；以及约 250 家年支出达 1,000 万美元及以上的客户。

Anthropic 将客户的强劲增长势头归因于“随着客户意识到在整个组织中部署 Claude 的价值而带来的使用量大幅扩张”，这也推动其截至第三季度末的净营收留存率（Net Revenue Retention）达到了约 900%。

在对整个传统 SaaS 行业提出质疑的同时，Anthropic 将 Claude 定位为并非“服务于单一用例的静态产品”，而是涵盖模型、开发者平台以及用户直接交互的应用这三层、且“能力快速进阶的前沿 AI”。

“任何一层的进步都会在这三层之间产生复合效应，从而加快我们交付更强大智能的速度，”文件中写道，并将这种“整合策略（integrated approach）”归结为越来越多客户同时使用 Claude 平台和第一方应用的原因。

这种打法并不陌生。Uber 从叫车服务起步，随后拓展至外卖配送和货运。在 AWS 方面，亚马逊先通过云计算服务吸引客户，随后将合作关系扩展至存储、数据库等其他产品，使客户越来越难以脱离其生态系统。与这些公司类似，Anthropic 无需向全新买家推销每一种产品：一家从 API 起步的企业，可以先向其工程师团队部署 Claude Code，进而向更广泛的员工团队推广 Cowork。

这些应用用户变得更有价值得多。文件显示，在第三季度，使用 Claude Code 且支出排名前 5% 的 Claude 企业版客户，其每月支出约为未使用该代码工具的普通企业用户的 20 倍。这一发现展示了单个用户支出增长的巨大空间，也解释了为何 Anthropic 热衷于将自身应用程序推销给那些最初仅使用 API 的客户。

Anthropic 表示，公司正通过投资应用 AI（Applied AI）团队来放大这种自然扩散。一个内部 Applied AI 团队专门与初创公司及大企业合作，协助将 Claude 嵌入客户现有的技术栈中；此外，该公司最近还与黑石（Blackstone）及其他私募股权机构合作推出了一家名为“Ode with Anthropic”的合资实体，派驻前哨工程师（forward-deployed engineers）深入企业内部，利用 Claude 构建定制化 AI 工具。

Anthropic 还依托其与超大规模云厂商 AWS、Google Cloud 和 Microsoft Azure 的第三方分发合作伙伴关系。在文件中被称为“联合市场拓展策略（joint go-to-market approach）”的模式下，Anthropic 与客户保持直接合同关系，并向各云厂商支付渠道费用。公司称，这使其能够“避免渠道冲突”并“掌握自主定价权”。

随着这家 AI 巨头试图通过发布“旨在使现有产品经济价值相形见绌的新类别产品”来不断“重塑我们的业务”，Anthropic 初步显效的客户粘性策略可能会变得至关重要。该公司表示，与典型企业相比，他们将减少在“巩固现有产品和商业模式”上的精力，而将更多精力投入到“定义新模式”之中。

招股书还指出了面临的逆风挑战，尽管其营收增长令人瞩目——2026 年上半年营收达到 163 亿美元，远高于去年同期的 12 亿美元。协助销售 Claude 的云合作伙伴正日益将 Anthropic 视为竞争对手，Anthropic 表示，这可能会导致其难以从这些云厂商处获得所需的算力保障。文件中指出，亚马逊、谷歌和微软可能会优先考虑自身的需求或他们所投资的竞争对手。

客户集中度是另一项风险。

“我们最大客户需求的任何不利变动……都可能对我们的业务和前景产生不利影响，”风险因素章节中写道。“因此，如果无法通过开拓新的客户关系或增加其他现有客户的业务来弥补，一个或多个最大客户大幅削减开支或流失，都可能对我们的业务、财务状况和运营业绩产生不利影响。”

Anthropic 未立即回应 TechCrunch 的置评请求。

Anthropic is building the same kind of cross-product ecosystem that helped make tech companies like Amazon and Uber enormously sticky, and its S-1 suggests the strategy is working. More than half of customers spending at least $100,000 annually now use both the Claude platform and a first-party app like Claude Code or Cowork, up from about 30% at the end of last year.

“The speed and depth of our enterprise customer adoption are powerful evidence of Claude’s position at the frontier of AI,” the S-1, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, reads.

As of September 30, Anthropic recorded more than 11,900 customers spending at least $100,000; more than 1,900 customers spending upward of $1 million; and about 250 customers spending $10 million or more annually.

Anthropic attributes customer momentum to a “significant usage expansion as customers realize the value of deploying Claude across their organizations,” which drove net revenue retention of about 900% as of the end of the third quarter.

Throwing shade at the entire legacy SaaS industry, Anthropic pitches Claude as not a “static product that serves a single use case,” but rather “frontier AI with rapidly advancing capabilities” spanning the models, the developer platform, and the applications users interact with directly.

“An advance at any layer compounds across all three layers, accelerating the pace at which we can deliver more capable intelligence,” the filing reads, calling this “integrated approach” the reason more customers use both the Claude Platform and first-party apps.

The playbook is familiar. Uber began by selling rides but has expanded into food delivery and freight. With AWS, Amazon drew in customers with cloud computing services before expanding those relationships into storage, databases, and other offerings, making the ecosystem increasingly hard to leave. Like those companies, Anthropic doesn’t have to sell each product to a brand-new buyer: A business that starts with the API can deploy Claude Code to their engineers and then Cowork to their broader workforce.

Those app users become far more valuable. In the third quarter, the highest-spending 5% of Claude Enterprise customers who used Claude Code spent about 20x as much per month as the average enterprise user who didn’t use the coding tool, per the filing. The finding demonstrates how much room there is for per-user spend to grow, and illustrates why Anthropic is keen to get its applications into the accounts that start with the API.

Anthropic said it amplifies that organic diffusion by investing in Applied AI teams. An internal Applied AI team works with startups and enterprises to help place Claude inside customers’ existing technology stacks, and the company recently launched a separate venture with Blackstone and other private equity firms, dubbed Ode with Anthropic, to embed forward-deployed engineers into businesses to build bespoke AI tools with Claude.

Anthropic also leans on its third-party distribution partnerships with hyperscalers AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Under what the filing calls a “joint go-to-market approach,” Anthropic holds the direct contractual relationship with customers and pays each cloud provider a fee, which the company says lets it “avoid channel conflict” and “set pricing.”

Anthropic’s budding stickiness strategy may become essential as the AI giant seeks to constantly “reinvent our business” by releasing “new classes of products whose aim is to dwarf the economic value of our existing ones.” The company says it will devote less effort than a typical business to “entrenching our current products and business models, and more effort to defining new ones.”

The filing also flags headwinds, despite impressive revenue growth of $16.3 billion for the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion in the same period last year. The cloud partnerships that help sell Claude are increasingly seeing Anthropic as a competitor, which Anthropic says could lead to difficulties securing the compute it needs from them. The filing states that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft may prioritize their own requirements or rivals they’ve invested in.

Customer concentration is another risk.

“Any adverse change in demand from our largest customers … could adversely affect our business and prospects,” reads part of the risk factors section. “As a result, a significant reduction in spending by, or the loss of, one or more of our largest customers, if not offset by new customer relationships or increased business from our other existing customers, could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”

Anthropic did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.