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Anthropic raises $13B Series F

anthropic.com

131–140 of 661 posts

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#131
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Locally run video models that are just as good as today’s closed models are going to be the watershed moment The companies doing foundational video models have stakeholders that don’t want to be associated with what people really want to generate But they are pushing the space forward and the uncensored and unrestricted video model is coming

Nobody wants to make a commercial NSFW model that then suffers a jailbreak... for what is the most illegal NSFW content.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#132

why would nvidia not create their own foundational model?

Why didn't the people selling shovels to gold miners dig for gold themselves?

Because Nvidia is making actual profit selling hardware to those who do, not hoping for a big payout sometime in the future. Different risk/reward model, different goals.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#133

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…

The wildest part is that the frontier models have a lifespan of 6 months or so. I don't see how it's sustainable to keep throwing this kind of money at training new models that will be obsolete in the blink of an eye. Unless you believe that AGI is truly just a few model generations away and once achieved it's game over for everyone but the winner. I don't.

It is being played like a winner-takes-it-all right now (it may or may not be such a market). So it is a game of being the one that is left standing, once the others fall off. In this kind of game, speeding more is done as a strategy to increase the chances of other competitors running out of cash or otherwise hitting a wall. Sustainability is the opposite of the goal being pursued... Whether one reaches "AGI" is not considered important either, as long as one can starve out most competitors.

And for the newcomers, the scale needs to be bigger than what the incumbents (Google and Microsoft) have as discretionary spending - which is at least a few billion per year. Because at that rate, those companies can sustain it forever and would be default winners. So I think yearly expenditure is going to be 20B year++

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#134
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that the performance unlock from ramping up RL (RLVR specifically) is not fully priced into the current generation yet. Could be wrong, and people closer to the metal will know better, but people I talk to still feel optimistic about the next couple of years.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trustee's reports on FTX's internal processes were damning. Even they had held their Anthropic on the way up, who's to say their internal FTT ledger and black holes in the Alameda books would not have eclipsed that? The issue wasn't that crypto markets in general were down at that point; the issue was they were doing frauds.

the frauds were stopped by Sam going to jail. There was still money left by liquidating, which in hindsight was a very poor timing.

> hindsight

If the liquidators had perfect hindsight, they'd be trading their own money. Not cleaning up other people's messes.

Their job is to be responsible and follow procedure.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#136
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.

Its not clear to me that it needs to. If at the margins it can still provide an advantage in the market or national defense, then the spice must flow

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps there are salient differences between art on a wall and a company.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#138
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still bleeding money with no profitability in sight, niche product or household name

same again for Amazon, Tesla, Uber and others. Then they began making billions. Anthropic is not a niche anymore though. Same for Chat GPT.

That's a pretty random selection. Amazon makes money. Uber is clawed their way back from the pit of doom of not having a viable business model and being led by a jackass. Tesla is a meme stock. At best these examples tell us nothing.

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#139
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The raw model scale is not increasing by much lately. AI companies are constrained by what fits in this generation of hardware, and waiting for the next generation to become available. Models that are much larger than the current frontier are still too expensive to train, and far too expensive to serve them en masse. In the meanwhile, "better data", "better training methods" and "more training compute" are the main w…

> AI companies are constrained by what fits in this generation of hardware, and waiting for the next generation to become available.

Does this apply to Google that is using custom built TPUs while everyone else uses stock Nvidia?

Re: Anthropic raises $13B Series F

#140

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…

A lot of moats are just money. Money to buy competition, capture regulation, buy exclusivity, etc.
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