Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic • Hacker News Board

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#41

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

pjl0 wrote: post #29

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your TDS Wat?

DESPERATELY trying to insinuate that the only possible reason to acknowledge that many people find distasteful the association between OpenAI and the desire for autonomous killbots MUST be that people are being unfair to Trump because of mental illness.

Oh, Trump Derangement Syndrome. I found a utility in Wisconsin and was really trying to find the connection…

I guess to address the point, having a problem with Hegseth isn’t the same as having a problem with Trump. And given some of Trump’s administration is embracing e.g. Mythos, it seems unfair to characterize Dario v. Hegseth as anything broader.

There was a recent moment when OpenAI went from the uncontested darling of consumer and investing America, to being second place to Anthropic. It happened rapidly, and I saw it at least on the investor side in the weekend after the supply-chain risk designation. (Disclosure: that’s also the week I signed up for Claude, in part out of protest, but mostly to see what the fuss was about.) I think there is a lesson for anyone working with startups or in tech from this example—it may be one of the most violent strategic sea changes I’ve seen in a while.

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#42

Post by lanthissa » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #25

"The Alphabet subsidiary is committing to invest $10 billion now, at a $350 billion valuation for Anthropic, with another $30 billion to follow if Anthropic hits certain performance targets, according to Anthropic." this is insane. on the secondary market the valuation is 2-3x that. what gives?

Googles giving them something thats a lot more scares to them then dollars, large volumes of chips quickly.

If you gave anthropic 10b cash they couldn't get chips in the 0-6mo timeframe at scale. Anthropic is suffering reputational damage due to choices they have to make around capacity constraints.

Google, AWS, and Azure are the only people who can help them so they hold the cards, thus the good terms.

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#43

Post by karmasimida » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

It’s pretty wild how badly Altman siding with Hegseth has backfired. (And how competently Dario has played his hand.) I don’t think that’s the ultimate cause of the turnaround in fortunes. But it strikes me, at least from the investor and potentially urban-consumer perspectives, as a pivotal moment in both companies’ fortunes.

What backfired?

Ant's recent rise has little to none to do with retail subscribers, it is Claude Code with Opus 4.5+, followed by their Mythos stunt

I would say the flood of $20 Claude Subscribers due to news cycle backfired on them, now everyone is getting worse outputs and exposed their shortage on compute, which they can't fix anytime soon.

Pretty much everyone I know has both cc and codex now, just because how unreliable cc has become.

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#44

Post by infecto » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

urba_ wrote: post #28

I consider them competitors… This reminds me of Microsoft in 1997 investing $150 million in Apple, saving it from near bankruptcy

They already had a non trivial stake in Anthropic though?

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#45

Post by throwawaytea » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

If you added up all the major AI valuations, it's apparently worth more than products Americans constantly buy and rely on for their main life. So either AI is going to be involved in every Americans life to a large degree, and paying real money for, or these valuations are insanely wrong.

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#46

Post by ordinaryradical » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #26

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

It’s pretty wild how badly Altman siding with Hegseth has backfired. (And how competently Dario has played his hand.) I don’t think that’s the ultimate cause of the turnaround in fortunes. But it strikes me, at least from the investor and potentially urban-consumer perspectives, as a pivotal moment in both companies’ fortunes.

It was enough for me to dig much deeper into OpenAI, where before we almost exclusively used them for services with any form of SLA.

You're saying it was a turning point for you to get more embedded with them? Way to be killer robot positive, I guess...

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#47

Post by infecto » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

It’s pretty wild how badly Altman siding with Hegseth has backfired. (And how competently Dario has played his hand.) I don’t think that’s the ultimate cause of the turnaround in fortunes. But it strikes me, at least from the investor and potentially urban-consumer perspectives, as a pivotal moment in both companies’ fortunes.

Is the simpler explanation that Alpha was already an investor and Anthropic has been making strides in their business model?

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#48

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

karmasimida wrote: post #43

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

It’s pretty wild how badly Altman siding with Hegseth has backfired. (And how competently Dario has played his hand.) I don’t think that’s the ultimate cause of the turnaround in fortunes. But it strikes me, at least from the investor and potentially urban-consumer perspectives, as a pivotal moment in both companies’ fortunes.

What backfired? Ant's recent rise has little to none to do with retail subscribers, it is Claude Code with Opus 4.5+, followed by their Mythos stunt I would say the flood of $20 Claude Subscribers due to news cycle backfired on them, now everyone is getting worse outputs and exposed their shortage on compute, which they can't fix anytime soon. Pretty much everyone I know has both cc and codex now, just because how un…

> would say the flood of 20+ Claude Subscribers due to news cycle backfired

This is a good hypothesis. I suspect we are both correct.

The PR boost from Anthropic standing its ground drove signups. That, in turn, drove investors. But the users also drove utilization, which degraded quality across the board.

My hypothesis rests on Anthropic’s user mix having significantly shifted to consumers (versus enterprise) after the mix-up. Whenever we get public numbers it would be interesting to test that.

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#49

Post by infecto » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

palmotea wrote: post #7

spindump8930 wrote: post #4

Hopefully this money means more compute infrastructure to help Anthropic counter the efficiency changes that have created this perceived downtrend in claude quality.

The puzzling thing is why Google would try to help with that. Aren't they competitors? Wouldn't they want their competitor to have problems? It's more understanding for Amazon or Microsoft to make such an investment, because they're not as competitive in the model space.

Google was already an investor in Anthropic but I don’t think they are truly competitors in this space.

Re: Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

#50

Post by panarky » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 8:45 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #25

"The Alphabet subsidiary is committing to invest $10 billion now, at a $350 billion valuation for Anthropic, with another $30 billion to follow if Anthropic hits certain performance targets, according to Anthropic." this is insane. on the secondary market the valuation is 2-3x that. what gives?

Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $350 billion valuation (pre-money) in February.

Google's deal from prior rounds likely lets them buy in at the same valuation other investors get every round, so they're just getting the February valuation.

Amazon did almost the same thing last week, at the same valuation.