The details are secret. It very well could be wasted GPU time but Anthropic could have made a killer offering as well.
I'm just speculating, but a particularly killer offering Elon wouldnt be able to refuse would be if Anthropic agreed to give them some training data / technology.
Billions in revenue just before your IPO isn't a bad deal either.
The icing on the cake for Elon is that it strengthens the competition to OpenAI.
Or is that actually his main motivation. Hard to know. Either way it's a win win win for him.
That's certainly one way one could spin this.
I guess loosing a ton of money then trying to get some if it back makes you a genius...
Yeah real geniuses go down with the ship and never change what they set out to do
Elon has many many faults but "loosing" money doesn't appear to be one of them. He's literally the richest person alive!