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Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

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

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reciprocal agreements aren't new, sometimes they're used to gain access to a market the other party already has established a foothold in for other industry segments. These companies operate in the same general industry: tech/internet so it could be complementary services they are each after. So far both of these companies have shown they suck at support so we know that's not it. It could be that it might help Anthro…

Funny how Gemini generally takes into account all the words you type whereas Google search tends to ignore most words you type or otherwise direct you to results for thematically (or grammatically or semantically) similar words to what you searched but otherwise wholly irrelevant. Google crippling search to bolster AI is a dangerous game. But without people going to competitors, what's the recourse?

They're already crippling their AI to perform what look like sponsored searches.

The plural of anecdote is not data but this does not feel like a one-off thing: I was trying to find where it would be possible to get to have a reasonable holiday, and asked Gemini to list me all the international airports in two named countries that had direct flights from my preferred departure airport. The response came back with a single proposed flight destination with "book here" prominently available.

Only once I told it that the search was NOT an impulse purchase intent and I really wanted to know the possible destinations - then did it actually come back with the list of airports that satisfied my search criteria.

Although if we are looking for the bright side, it did provide a valid and informative answer on the second try. I haven't had that kind of experience on SEO-infested Google search for quite a long time now.

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

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is the vast difference? Who's doing more of what, or whatever you're implying? And how do you quantify this?

The difference is (if you'll forgive me recruiting a couple of straw men for the purpose of illustrating the spectrum we are talking about here): Hobbyist solo dev, counting tokens, hitting quotas, trying things on little projects, giving up and not seeing what the fuss is about. vs Corporate developer, increasingly held accountable by their boss for hitting metrics for token usage; being handed every new model as so…

Okay, so just to be clear you're not commenting on productivity? Or what does "changes that impact" mean?

I might be missing a lot of self-evident assumptions here but I feel like I'm still missing so much context and have no idea what this difference is actually describing.

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

#525
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recursive self-improvement is one argument. Otherwise winner takes all seems much less likely than a OpenAI/Anthropic duopoly. For the best models, obviously other providers will have plenty of uses, but even looking at the revenue right now it's pretty concentrated at the top. So if I'm Google I'd want a decent chunk of at least one of them.

What is the argument for a duopoly when Kimi and Deepseek models are only months behind? It’s a commodity in the making.

The argument is based on one of these companies hitting the singularity, making it impossible for any other company to catch up ever. I still think it's way more likely we'll see a typical S-curve where innovation starts to plateau. But even a small chance of it happening in the future is worth a lot of money today.

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

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly how it looks right now but where's the guarantee? What happens if it turns out that deep learning on its own can't achieve AGI but someone figures out a proprietary algorithm that can? That sort of thing. Metaphorically we're a bunch of tribesmen speculating about the future potential outcomes of the space race (ie the impacts, limits, and timeline of ASI).

Imagine such an AI exists. What good is AI that is so good that you cannot sell API access because it would help others to build equivalently powerful AI and compete with you? If you gatekeep, you will not make back the money you invested. If you don't gatekeep, your competitors will use your model to build competing models. I guess you can sell it to the Department of War.

> Imagine such an AI exists. What good is AI that is so good that you cannot sell API access because it would help others to build equivalently powerful AI and compete with you?

At this point, if you can no longer safely drip-feed industry the access to "thinking as a service" and rake in rent, you start using it, displacing existing players in segment after segment until you kill the entire software industry.

That's pre-ASI and entirely distinct from the AI itself becoming so good it takes over.

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

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, since Google is both a supplier and a competitor, it’s both vendor finance and hedging. Also, it increases their investment in AI, in general. Arguably, too much of this kind of hedging is anti-competitive. But that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem yet?

Are we stoping too early in this analysis though? Google versus OpenAI and Anthropic, sure, but Microsoft is deep into OpenAI. Google helping Anthropic is also putting MS into a corner (one that may even be shrinking? Copilot and openAI financing hurting their brand, rumours of deep displeasure at OpenAIs promises v returns). Seen from afar I see Google happy to provide TPUs for money (improving Googles strategic pos…

MS is not so deep with OpenAI, it's not all black and white, they have signed several distribution deals where Claude drives Copilot [1], since Anthropic and MS are better aligned in the Enterprise market, it makes sense. It also makes sense for MS not to lose ground anywhere at this point and play with the best. Actually, any cash rich company that is not OpenAI or Anthropic wants to be close-by when any of the two needs money. That's the ultimate win they can aspire for right now, get a financial slice of frontier models on one hand while not losing revenue on the other given the existential ordeal AI represents for them.

1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2026/03/0...

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is (if you'll forgive me recruiting a couple of straw men for the purpose of illustrating the spectrum we are talking about here): Hobbyist solo dev, counting tokens, hitting quotas, trying things on little projects, giving up and not seeing what the fuss is about. vs Corporate developer, increasingly held accountable by their boss for hitting metrics for token usage; being handed every new model as so…

Okay, so just to be clear you're not commenting on productivity? Or what does "changes that impact" mean? I might be missing a lot of self-evident assumptions here but I feel like I'm still missing so much context and have no idea what this difference is actually describing.

If you have some objective measure of productivity in mind, feel free to share it, but no that's not what I'm commenting on.

I'm talking more about why threads like this seem to be full of people saying 'this has completely changed how corporate development works' and other people saying 'I tried it a few times and I don't get the hype'

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

#530
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand run rate revenue is just a fancy way of saying that "the last month we had sales, and if that continues for a year we will have a AAR of 30B. meaning it's not 30B yet, but the sales numbers indicates that we get there by continue selling at the current speed. But to have revenue of $100 and get $30B in ARR I guess the period looked at needs to be seconds.... (Run Rate = Revenue in Period / # of…

Not even that. It's not based on actual sales in, for example, the past month. It's based on an expected continuous growth based on the growth of the past month (or whatever period you pick). It's a forecast.

I cant say what all companies does. But my google seaches and and chatgpt Do not agree with you on that. They stick to actual sales.
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