Live data from Hacker News

Anthropic raises $13B Series F

anthropic.com

101–110 of 661 posts

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#102
post #34

The compute moat is getting absolutely insane. We're basically at the point where you need a small country's GDP just to stay in the game for one more generation of models. What gets me is that this isn't even a software moat anymore - it's literally just whoever can get their hands on enough GPUs and power infrastructure. TSMC and the power companies are the real kingmakers here. You can have all the talent in the w…

It's not clear to me that each new generation of models is going to be "that" much better vs cost. Anecdotally moving from model to model I'm not seeing huge changes in many use cases. I can just pick an older model and often I can't tell the difference... Video seems to be moving forward fast from what I can tell, but it sounds like the back end cost of compute there is skyrocketing with it raising other questions.

We do seem to be hitting the top of the curve of diminishing returns. Forget AGI - they need a performance breakthrough in order to stop shoveling money into this cash furnace.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#103

The compute moat is getting absolutely insane. We're basically at the point where you need a small country's GDP just to stay in the game for one more generation of models. What gets me is that this isn't even a software moat anymore - it's literally just whoever can get their hands on enough GPUs and power infrastructure. TSMC and the power companies are the real kingmakers here. You can have all the talent in the w…

Just in case, can they be repurposed for bitcoin mining? :) Edit: for the curious, no. An H100 costs about ~25k and produces $1.2/day mining bitcoin. Without factoring in electricity.

Before your edit I was going to answer, sadly no, they can't even be repurposed for Bitcoin mining.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#104
post #83

The compute moat is getting absolutely insane. We're basically at the point where you need a small country's GDP just to stay in the game for one more generation of models. What gets me is that this isn't even a software moat anymore - it's literally just whoever can get their hands on enough GPUs and power infrastructure. TSMC and the power companies are the real kingmakers here. You can have all the talent in the w…

In this imaginary timeline where initial investments keep increasing this way, how long before we see a leak shutter a company? Once the model is out, no one would pay for it, right?

In this imaginary reality where LLMs just keep getting better and better, all that a leak means is that you will eat-up your capital until you release your next generation. And you will want to release it very quickly either way, and should have a problem for a few months at most.

And if LLMs don't keep getting qualitatively more capable every few months, that means that all this investment won't pay off and people will soon just use some open weights for everything.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#105
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably would have made his crimes less visible, but not less criminal.

Like Martin Shkreli, who made his investors whole with his gambling, but still went to jail.

He went to jail because his autism wouldn't allow him to be duplicitous like a CEO doing evil things has to be and he attracted too much negative attention.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#106
post #83

The compute moat is getting absolutely insane. We're basically at the point where you need a small country's GDP just to stay in the game for one more generation of models. What gets me is that this isn't even a software moat anymore - it's literally just whoever can get their hands on enough GPUs and power infrastructure. TSMC and the power companies are the real kingmakers here. You can have all the talent in the w…

In this imaginary timeline where initial investments keep increasing this way, how long before we see a leak shutter a company? Once the model is out, no one would pay for it, right?

Whatever happens if/when a flagship model leaks, the legal fallout would be very funny to watch. Lawyers desperately trying to thread the needle such that training on libgen is fair use, but training on leaked weights warrants the death penalty.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#107

FTX creditors should be seeing red. the trustee sold Anthropic out at the bottom. Same for crypto. Hindsight is 20-20, but imagine had CZ not made those tweets of divesting from the FTT token. FTX could have possibly weathered the final 3 months of the BTC bear market and then reaped the post-2023 AI and crypto bull market. Sam would have gone from pauper in jail to brilliant investor in Anthropic, mogul, and so on.

He did crimes. Whether or not money was lost, it was still crimes. B

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#108
post #9

I feel like the money itself makes less and less sense these days. It's just numbers that are becoming increasingly detached from the real world

The real world sees no other opportunities for outsized returns. Too much money chasing too little opportunity.

That's what wealth inequality does.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#109
post #9

I feel like the money itself makes less and less sense these days. It's just numbers that are becoming increasingly detached from the real world

If I had a dime for every time I see this kind of hot take, I'd be able to buy an H200 with that. A man looks at economics. Understands nothing. Thinks it must be all fake and made up. He must be so smart for seeing it through!

It is all fake and made up, and the numbers are detached from the real world, but it's not like the market doesn't know that.

Btw there's a decentish board game called Modern Art based around the pricing of art with no intrinsic value.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alphabet is "worth" 2.45 trillion on the public market, is anthropic worth a bit less than 10% of google going forward? I don't think that's entirely unreasonable...

Alphabet 2024 revenue: 350 billions dollars Anthropic 2024 revenue: 1 billion dollars Unreasonable doesn’t even start to capture it. Anthropic being worth 10% of Alphabet is beyond insane.

So all it takes is Anthropic 35x-ing their revenue once they start selling ad spots? That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Right now nobody wants to be the first to offer advertising in LLM services, but LLM conversation history provides a wealth of data for ad targeting. And in more permissive jurisdictions you can have the LLM deliver ads organically in the conversation or just shift the opinions and biases of the model through a short mention in the system message

Post reply on HN