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Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

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Re: Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

#41

Post by jeffbee »

Culonavirus wrote: post #32
shubhamjain wrote: post #11

If you think you need to spend $100B, does using a third-party cloud provider still make sense? It doesn’t matter what sweet deal Amazon is pitching—in that scenario, you’d want to own your stack. Especially in a hyper-competitive field like this, where margins are going to matter a lot soon. It feels like these hyperscalers are just raising as much as they can giving extremely rosy projections becauses these sooner…

Only Google and xAI build their own, no? I don't think it's that easy to vertically integrate massive datacenters into a software company. Both Google and xAI (Tesla, SpaceX) have a massive wealth of experience when it comes to building factories.

New level of glazing Elon Musk unlocked. xAI has a vertical integration advantage because Tesla once moved into an old Toyota factory and because once they paid Panasonic to put a Tesla sign outside a Panasonic battery factory. Incredible content.

Re: Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

#42

Post by alex_duf »

loveparade wrote: post #29
iot_devs wrote: post #7

Someone can explain to me what's the expectations for these AI labs? I mostly see their products as commodity at this point, with strong open source contenders. Eventually it will become hard to justify the premium on these models.

I give it one to two more years before open source models have fully caught up. Products are commodities and models are commodities too. GPUs cores are still hard to get for inference at scale right now. They need a platform with lock in but unsure what that would look like and why it wouldn't be based on open source models.

What does "fully caught up" mean in the context of an ever evolving technology? I think I'm in support of open weight models (though there are safety implications), but these things aren't cheap to train and run. This fact alone gives no incentive for leading labs to release cutting edge open weight models. Why spend the money then give the product for free?

Now if "fully caught up" means today's level of intelligence is available for free in two years, by then that level of intelligence means very little

Re: Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

#44

Post by stavros »

alex_duf wrote: post #42
loveparade wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I give it one to two more years before open source models have fully caught up. Products are commodities and models are commodities too. GPUs cores are still hard to get for inference at scale right now. They need a platform with lock in but unsure what that would look like and why it wouldn't be based on open source models.

What does "fully caught up" mean in the context of an ever evolving technology? I think I'm in support of open weight models (though there are safety implications), but these things aren't cheap to train and run. This fact alone gives no incentive for leading labs to release cutting edge open weight models. Why spend the money then give the product for free? Now if "fully caught up" means today's level of intelligenc…

Yeah I don't understand it, it's a marathon with three companies perpetually a minute ahead, and people keep saying "I expect the stragglers to catch up".

The only thing I can see them meaning is what you said, "in a minute the stragglers will be where the leaders were a minute ago", which, yeah, sure.

Re: Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

#45

Post by vorticalbox »

alex_duf wrote: post #42
loveparade wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I give it one to two more years before open source models have fully caught up. Products are commodities and models are commodities too. GPUs cores are still hard to get for inference at scale right now. They need a platform with lock in but unsure what that would look like and why it wouldn't be based on open source models.

What does "fully caught up" mean in the context of an ever evolving technology? I think I'm in support of open weight models (though there are safety implications), but these things aren't cheap to train and run. This fact alone gives no incentive for leading labs to release cutting edge open weight models. Why spend the money then give the product for free? Now if "fully caught up" means today's level of intelligenc…

It’s never free your shifting costs from paying a company for their api use vs the power costs of running it locally.

Re: Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

#46

Post by throwup238 »

mossTechnician wrote: post #34
Tepix wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPUs are lasting longer than foreseen, in fact old GPUs are more valuable now (making more money!) than they were three years ago when they were new. Tokens will continue to increase in price until the supply meets the demand. That's going to take a while.

Are old datacenter GPUs making more money than they were before? Various sources point to GPUs dying quickly (in 2024, a Google engineer suggested 3 years maximum), and even if they don't, newer chips cause rapid depreciation of older ones.[1] [0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/datacenter-g... [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/14/ai-gpu-depreciation-coreweav...

AWS is still offering g4dn instances that run on NVIDIA T4 GPUs, which were first released in 2018. My last employer is still running a bunch of otherwise discontinued g3 instances with 2015 era GPUs because it’s not worth validating the numeric codes on new GPUs. People (especially journalists) underestimate how long these cards are economically useful.

Re: Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

#48

Post by ForrestN »

iot_devs wrote: post #7

Someone can explain to me what's the expectations for these AI labs? I mostly see their products as commodity at this point, with strong open source contenders. Eventually it will become hard to justify the premium on these models.

I think this "Mythos" situation, whether real or hype, points to the endgame here. Eventually, when you have a model powerful enough to have big consequences in the world, you stop worrying about selling it to consumers and start either a) using it to rule the world or b) watch as it gets nationalized. If you have a machine powerful enough to automate everything, why sell access to it when you could just...be all things to all people? Use the god machine yourself to take over more and more of the economy?

Re: Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

#49

Post by lokar »

ForrestN wrote: post #48
iot_devs wrote: post #7

Someone can explain to me what's the expectations for these AI labs? I mostly see their products as commodity at this point, with strong open source contenders. Eventually it will become hard to justify the premium on these models.

I think this "Mythos" situation, whether real or hype, points to the endgame here. Eventually, when you have a model powerful enough to have big consequences in the world, you stop worrying about selling it to consumers and start either a) using it to rule the world or b) watch as it gets nationalized. If you have a machine powerful enough to automate everything, why sell access to it when you could just...be all thi…

I disagree. The point of the mythos hype is to get regulation to cut off competitors.
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