But with a 2T valuation-- if they did raise, let's say, 300B, that's a 15% float, maybe they'd have a chance.
518 B in future compute obligations for the coming decade. 300 B, then 218 B is left. That's 13x their current revenue, not too far from 10x their current revenue.
Perhaps they could survive if they raised 300B. With that they'd only need to increase revenue a little bit, and that's probably possible, what with inflation and all.
The big problem is if there's improvements in AI accelerators that aren't going to be be bought by the companies that the people to whom Anthropic have obligations are likely to buy from. So if Google, AWS or NVIDIA end up not being the leaders in tokens/$, then Anthropic are screwed.
I'm not sure how the total picture ends up if one adds OpenAI to the picture.
Why? Do you think frontier AI will never generate enough profit to justify its costs? The market seems to move on vibes rather than logic. I can imagine one of those company failing and the other seizing the market.
while what you say is true, trillions of dollars and thousands of people invested in something that ultimately leads to a few companies from china doing the same 10x cheaper is a vibe that can go so far
I know that there are a few regulated industries that will go out of their way to not have any prod data ever exposed outside of the United States.
"China can do it cheaper" applies well to your personal projects. It doesn't apply well when you handle things like trade secrets, healthcare, or financial data.
> It doesn't apply well when you handle things like trade secrets, healthcare, or financial data.
OpneAI stole valuable secrets from their customers Buckmaster and Alpöge, why should a company expect them not to do the same with their trade secrets?
What was the nature of Buckmaster & Alpöge's business relationship with OpenAI?
When we started using Claude at my work, it wasn't just with Anthropic-hosted instances of the service. As I understand it, we use a copy hosted on a GCP Vertex AI instance. It'd be weird if Anthropic ended up with our data.
If Buckmaster & Alpöge had some sort of agreement with OpenAI that their inputs would not be used to train OpenAI's models or otherwise generate revenue for the company, yeah, that's theft.
If Buckmaster & Alpöge were using the same OpenAI-hosted services as everyone else with a standard EULA that effectively says "we get to look at your data and do what we want with it", well, then I don't know what they expected.
I promise you China can do it cheaper is good enough for many corporates that have neutral views at best on the labs
These are open models, go speak to corporates see what they’re up to
Also the healthcare bit is funny. Go ask the healthcare bigs and their intermediates what they’re doing today, hint it’s India
American corporates have zero loyalty to America or Americans, and they love bypassing laws, attempting regulatory capture on American corps is braindead and shows a weak hand, as they speak all this bluster about 2-3T valuations for an easily reproducible technology
> Also the healthcare bit is funny. Go ask the healthcare bigs and their intermediates what they’re doing today, hint it’s India
Funny you should mention that.
I am a team lead in a healthcare IT company. On my team are two people in India and one person (besides me) in the US.
These aren't contractors. They're full-time employees. Vetted, interviewed, subject to corporate policies like everyone here in the US, given a VPN to connect to things with.
Wanna guess what they are absolutely forbidden from doing by the contract that our clients signed, and by extension, what the people located in the US spend a lot of time doing that they otherwise wouldn't have to?
> American corporates have zero loyalty to America or Americans, and they love bypassing laws, attempting regulatory capture on American corps is braindead and shows a weak hand, as they speak all this bluster about 2-3T valuations for an easily reproducible technology
No arguments there, they should be taught the meaning of loyalty.
huh? assuming you're in america right now, the device you're using to publish that comment has been built in china or had most of it's components anyways, which are from some very trade secret-sensitive companies
Tangentially: The costs could be justified even if it doesn't turn into profit, no? Because if the price of good, robust software plummets, then that itself would be a a solid return on investment for the world.
> Do you think frontier AI will never generate enough profit to justify its costs?
I don't know, but I'm not sure it matters. Anthropic and OpenAI still have such large market shares only because their services are heavily subsidized. This can't go on forever.
At some point, they will have to stop burning investor money and start hiking prices. At that point, all of their competitors will look even better than they do now. So I don't see how these two companies in particular can generate enough profit to justify their costs.
Correct and before some idiot comes in and says ‘high gross profit margin’
Yeah shut up idiot - they need to raise prices to cover operating expenditures and reinvestment that stays inline with the valuation. If it implodes they’ll have trouble raising money later and they’ll need to lay off people - aka on bad terms.
They and their partners can’t pay off the debt to buy top-of-the-line inference hardware before it becomes obsolete and requires more debt to buy the next generation of top-of-the-line inference hardware.
This cycle will continue every 3-5 years. Given the supply for this hardware can’t keep up with the demand, they’ll be expected to pay more with each cycle.
Contrary to popular belief, plenty of long-term profitable businesses have no moat. It's just that if you use Warren Buffett's investment strategy and want to buy stocks to keep for decades, companies with moats are the surest way of doing that.
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
I assume you mean unsubstantiated.
The numbers are out there for all. Dropping token prices. Rising borrowing rates. Absurd contractual commitments. Commoditizing technology.
Yeah, i calculated something like that earlier.
But with a 2T valuation-- if they did raise, let's say, 300B, that's a 15% float, maybe they'd have a chance.
518 B in future compute obligations for the coming decade. 300 B, then 218 B is left. That's 13x their current revenue, not too far from 10x their current revenue.
Perhaps they could survive if they raised 300B. With that they'd only need to increase revenue a little bit, and that's probably possible, what with inflation and all.
The big problem is if there's improvements in AI accelerators that aren't going to be be bought by the companies that the people to whom Anthropic have obligations are likely to buy from. So if Google, AWS or NVIDIA end up not being the leaders in tokens/$, then Anthropic are screwed.
I'm not sure how the total picture ends up if one adds OpenAI to the picture.
Why? Do you think frontier AI will never generate enough profit to justify its costs? The market seems to move on vibes rather than logic. I can imagine one of those company failing and the other seizing the market.
while what you say is true, trillions of dollars and thousands of people invested in something that ultimately leads to a few companies from china doing the same 10x cheaper is a vibe that can go so far
I know that there are a few regulated industries that will go out of their way to not have any prod data ever exposed outside of the United States.
"China can do it cheaper" applies well to your personal projects. It doesn't apply well when you handle things like trade secrets, healthcare, or financial data.
> It doesn't apply well when you handle things like trade secrets, healthcare, or financial data.
OpneAI stole valuable secrets from their customers Buckmaster and Alpöge, why should a company expect them not to do the same with their trade secrets?
I'm looking at the wiki here [0]
What was the nature of Buckmaster & Alpöge's business relationship with OpenAI?
When we started using Claude at my work, it wasn't just with Anthropic-hosted instances of the service. As I understand it, we use a copy hosted on a GCP Vertex AI instance. It'd be weird if Anthropic ended up with our data.
If Buckmaster & Alpöge had some sort of agreement with OpenAI that their inputs would not be used to train OpenAI's models or otherwise generate revenue for the company, yeah, that's theft.
If Buckmaster & Alpöge were using the same OpenAI-hosted services as everyone else with a standard EULA that effectively says "we get to look at your data and do what we want with it", well, then I don't know what they expected.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_priority...
I promise you China can do it cheaper is good enough for many corporates that have neutral views at best on the labs
These are open models, go speak to corporates see what they’re up to
Also the healthcare bit is funny. Go ask the healthcare bigs and their intermediates what they’re doing today, hint it’s India
American corporates have zero loyalty to America or Americans, and they love bypassing laws, attempting regulatory capture on American corps is braindead and shows a weak hand, as they speak all this bluster about 2-3T valuations for an easily reproducible technology
> Also the healthcare bit is funny. Go ask the healthcare bigs and their intermediates what they’re doing today, hint it’s India
Funny you should mention that.
I am a team lead in a healthcare IT company. On my team are two people in India and one person (besides me) in the US.
These aren't contractors. They're full-time employees. Vetted, interviewed, subject to corporate policies like everyone here in the US, given a VPN to connect to things with.
Wanna guess what they are absolutely forbidden from doing by the contract that our clients signed, and by extension, what the people located in the US spend a lot of time doing that they otherwise wouldn't have to?
> American corporates have zero loyalty to America or Americans, and they love bypassing laws, attempting regulatory capture on American corps is braindead and shows a weak hand, as they speak all this bluster about 2-3T valuations for an easily reproducible technology
No arguments there, they should be taught the meaning of loyalty.
huh? assuming you're in america right now, the device you're using to publish that comment has been built in china or had most of it's components anyways, which are from some very trade secret-sensitive companies
Tangentially: The costs could be justified even if it doesn't turn into profit, no? Because if the price of good, robust software plummets, then that itself would be a a solid return on investment for the world.
> Do you think frontier AI will never generate enough profit to justify its costs?
I don't know, but I'm not sure it matters. Anthropic and OpenAI still have such large market shares only because their services are heavily subsidized. This can't go on forever.
At some point, they will have to stop burning investor money and start hiking prices. At that point, all of their competitors will look even better than they do now. So I don't see how these two companies in particular can generate enough profit to justify their costs.
Correct and before some idiot comes in and says ‘high gross profit margin’
Yeah shut up idiot - they need to raise prices to cover operating expenditures and reinvestment that stays inline with the valuation. If it implodes they’ll have trouble raising money later and they’ll need to lay off people - aka on bad terms.
They and their partners can’t pay off the debt to buy top-of-the-line inference hardware before it becomes obsolete and requires more debt to buy the next generation of top-of-the-line inference hardware.
This cycle will continue every 3-5 years. Given the supply for this hardware can’t keep up with the demand, they’ll be expected to pay more with each cycle.
There is no moat
Contrary to popular belief, plenty of long-term profitable businesses have no moat. It's just that if you use Warren Buffett's investment strategy and want to buy stocks to keep for decades, companies with moats are the surest way of doing that.
Excess returns.
Heard of it? No? Shut up then. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
or network effects, or intangible assets (e.g. a brand, patents) or even economies of scale which they own and can leverage.