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

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

#611

Post by bojan » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:05 AM UTC

fc417fc802 wrote: post #538

Aeolun wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> minimize loss of life this time around is (ironically enough) the rise of autonomous weapons systems I think that just means the relative civilian loss of life will increase once again.

What strategic merit is there in targeting civilians or life critical infrastructure in a fully automated battlebot scenario? Perhaps it's naive but I would expect stockpiles, datacenters, and any key infrastructure on which the local semiconductor fabrication depends to be the primary targets.

The current reality doesn't match your expectations. Russia is using automated warfare to strike what are primarily human life-critical targets.

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

#612

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:13 AM UTC

HappMacDonald wrote: post #563

throwaway2037 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the full the history of this story, but I honestly wonder if type of scandal is still possible in the United States. After Enron and Worldcomm, the US introduced Sarbanes-Oxley reporting regulations. Additionally, after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/2009, there was a dramatic increase in regulations for banks (of all kinds) and insurance companies.

.. yet today we have Kalshi, Polymarket, et al.

Those are private gambling businesses akin to a casino, not publicly listed businesses subject to the aforementioned regulations.

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

#613

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:15 AM UTC

vovavili wrote: post #313

throwawaytea wrote: post #45

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.

At some point in American history you probably could have said the same about railroads.

"The American Civil War (1861–1865) was followed by a boom in railroad construction. 33,000 miles (53,000 km) of track were laid across the country between 1868 and 1873,[28] with much of the craze in railroad investment being driven by government land grants and subsidies to the railroads.[29] The railroad industry was the largest employer outside of agriculture and involved large amounts of money and risk. A large infusion of cash from speculators caused spectacular growth in the industry and in the construction of docks, factories, and ancillary facilities. Most capital was involved in projects offering no immediate or early returns.[30]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873#Factors

"In the United States, the panic was known as the "Great Depression" until the events of 1929 and the early 1930s set a new standard.[2]"

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

#614

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:18 AM UTC

vovavili wrote: post #317

sethops1 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay TMobile $100 a month but they aren't worth a trillion dollars.

TMobile is effectively a monopolist in many US regions.

There are no places in the US that Tmobile is the only wireless mobile network provider. While all 3 mobile network providers have weak coverage areas, Verizon is considered to have the most reach.

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

#615

Post by Aldipower » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:18 AM UTC

aucisson_masque wrote: post #223

Is anthropic really that good when you got deepseel V4 that has a fraction of the cost and works just as good ?

At least from an European perspective it is impossible to use DeepSeek v4 right now, as there are no privacy safe offerings.

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

#616

Post by svieira » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:21 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #403

jwpapi wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you drop this all you will absolutely kill it.

I'm not sure. I have a buddy that's one of the better engineers I know personally, and he struggled to maintain an "AI Lent" for even a month. He found he just wasn't productive enough without it. He did a writeup: https://buduroiu.com/blog/ai-lent-end/

> I delivered more work that I was less confident about, making me more miserable in the process

Don't leave the kicker out of the story

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

#617

Post by fauigerzigerk » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:22 AM UTC

netcan wrote: post #598

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Companies using the value of their shares to fund demand for their services. That's not what's happening here though. Google isn't using the value of its shares to fund demand. Google is using its own cash flow to fund this demand from Anthropic. The question is whether Anthropic has demand from end users for the capacity they are buying from Google (that's a yes I guess) and whether that demand is profitable for An…

True. Regardless, (a) it's ability/desire to make such investments is still driven by stock-driven optimism and (b) these transactions' "signal" can have a similar, warping effect. In this case the transaction creates demand for Google's services and also funds anthropic's growth... which represents demands for google's services. "Loop" is an approximation of an analogy. The risk is that enough of such transactions c…

>(a) it's ability/desire to make such investments is still driven by stock-driven optimism

I don't think it has much to do with the stock price at all. Current platform oligopolists fear the rise of new platforms. They want a foot in the door for strategic reasons.

What could happen is that frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI never become platforms and turn out to be providers of a largely commoditised, low margin service.

In that event, current valuations are too high. But Anthropic's valuation doesn't seem extreme to me. Their $30bn annual run rate is valued at $380bn.

Given this price and Anthropic's strategic value, Google's investment seems reasonable.

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

#618

Post by bonesss » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:24 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #544

bonesss wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You make some good points, but this part feels like a wild overreach: > torpedoing confidence in LLMs with their search AI summaries That is some real tin foil hat thinking.

Straightforward observations of market impact aren’t tin foil :)

Google didn’t launch LLM products despite being a tech leader, and have gotten piles of bad press for their misleading AI search summaries. They know how and why they suck. Google search is a highly popular and market facing service packaging bad summaries as “AI”. Meanwhile LLM searches threaten to disrupt Googles primary cash cow (advertising around search).

Here on HN, on Reddit, and media writ large, a lot of the “AI” failure stories are not about ChatGPT hallucinations, it’s the shockingly wrong search summaries from Google, undermining consumer confidence and breaching trust.

ChatGPT and other LLM providers rarely show conflicting source material side by side with misleading text gen. The number one search provider who leads in some LLM tech does though, routinely, looking incompetent and generating negative “AI” sentiment through repeated failures at mass scale…

So the theory here is either that the best search org in the world filled with geniuses can’t tell they’re pooping on their own product and profitability and aren’t fixing it because they can’t/won’t… … or … Google already makes money and is happy with substandard product and market performance in the cases where it hurts the necessary hype critical to other businesses but not themselves (while also pre-positioning in case LLM search becomes essential).

Win/win/win strategy with a substandard product, versus Google not being aware of what their biggest product is doing.

Googles AI summaries are doing lotsa work to make AI summaries seem terrible. I ascribe profit motives to their actions. Ascribing incompetence seems naive and irreconcilable with their strategic corporate history.

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

#619

Post by greenchair » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:26 AM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #161

throwawaytea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countless examples, but let's say Ford. Worth $150 billion, $50 billion not counting debt. My neighbors just gave Ford $60k. It'll be a while until my neighbor gives Anthropic $60k.

At 20 year depreciation it’s $250 a month. Close to Anthropic’s $200 model. IMHO at this point a lot of developers would rather walk than code manually.

nope

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

#620

Post by datavirtue » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:27 AM UTC

netcan wrote: post #596

robjeiter wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the whole market at this point is just AI since big tech other than Apple are all massively invested into that. Everyone owns either the S&P or the total world ETF which are both heavily skewed towards big tech and this trade - so literally everybody is in it. It might go well for a few more quarters/years but once something breaks or gets exponentially cheaper this will take down the whole market with it…

It's just hard to tell the difference between "real" demand and "circular." That's the concern. PG had an essay about this during the dotcom, when he worked at yahoo. Iirc...Yahoo's share price and other big successes in the space attracted investment into startups. Startups used that money to advertise on yahoo. Yahoo bought some of these the startups. So... a lot of the revenue used to analyze companies for investm…

I'm starting to transition how we build software at our company due to the power of AI. No more: five code monkey contractors under a lead. Two top-notch devs are all that is needed now, unrestrained by sprints and mindless ceremonies. There is going to be a giant sucking sound in India.

I can't continue the current model. The dev that gets AI is done in five hours, the ones that don't are thrashing for the next two weeks. I have to unleash the good AI dev. I have the Product team handing us markdown files now with an overview of the project and all the details and stories built into them. I'm literally transforming how a billion dollar company works right now because of this. I have Codex, Claude and GitHub Copilot enterprise accounts on top of Office 365. Everyone is being trained right now as most devs are behind, even.