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

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

#811

Post by MattRix » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

james2doyle wrote: post #309

consumer451 wrote: post #104

It is very difficult for me to see any amount of money being thrown at Anthropic as a bad idea. The amount of new revenue that I am personally able to create for my clients, using Claude models for dev, and Claude models inside the insanely agile products delivered, is astounding. If I was not currently experiencing this myself, and someone told me that this was possible, I would be calling them names.

You’re paying the subsidized cost. Those margins will shrink once the real bill comes due. I really think everyone will look back at this time as the golden area of cheap AI. We are already seeing the costs (and restrictions/limits) creep up with the Western models.

The open models of similar scales (ex. the new 1T deepseek model) are a fraction of the cost per token, so I don’t see how that can be the case. Inference is profitable, it’s the training that makes it unprofitable.

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

#812

Post by MattRix » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

renticulous wrote: post #660

Spacemolte wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me how productive it's possible to be using AI, but I also has this nagging feeling that we are being reeled into being so reliant on this that when the price starts going up, we will simply eat the cost. The math is pretty simple, and it's easy to justify still paying the price even if it goes up 10 fold, when compared to hirering more resources its still cheap. So I guess having multiple players and compe…

Going forward, models will start specializing. Anthropic will build a BioMed model for large drug companies. A math/compsci model for frontier theoretical research. A physics modelf or nuclear research. They can communicate each other for synergy effects e.g. for areas where math meets biomed etc. This will be cost reducing as well. We plebs don't need advanced models for our plumbing software work. Following example…

I don’t see why this would happen when the modern models already use MoE, which gives them most of the benefits of having specialized models.

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

#813

Post by jmalicki » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:37 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #803

jmalicki wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While value isn't linear, prejudgement of value for allocation of resources is very imperfect. A lot of stuff that doesn't make the cut is the the stuff that does have value. When you're lowering the bar, remember it's a noisy bar - so a lot more good stuff is going to come through as well.

Yes.. I agree. .. and that entropy can be where all the ultimate value is. That said... considering the point at hand is the context, it's important to start with the diminishing marginal returns. To give a simple example... Google and FB do not have "invest able software opportunities" at hand. They've been searching everywhere for nails for their "build software" hammer. They are well resourced and risk tolerant. T…

Most places I've worked have roadmaps, i.e. investable priorities.

If you can burn through lower priority experiments quickly it's great!

They might be working on all of the super high level things they can think of, but there are always more A/B tests, more features, etc. that are just lower priority, and the chaos of scaling up the org to address them all is super linear whereas the return on going down the list is sub linear.

So you end up with an equilibrium. If the cost shifts, just like in econ 101, the output will change.

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

#814

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

Planktonne wrote: post #761

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be, but I just don't know how you'd measure that in the short term. It's very hard to put a number to "how much software did Google release this month". You'd expect to see a substantial increase in revenue, but most kinds of software generate revenue only months down the line after adoption picks up, and few companies have even released Q1 results yet.

We've had LLMs for far longer than a quarter now; even if you think that only the recent ones have led to any improvement, you'd still expect to see something .

I’m skeptical that LLMs were capable of producing good software at all until Opus 4.5 in November, and they weren’t good enough to be in my personal workflow until 4.6 in February. I really do think the effects would have started only this quarter.

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

#815

Post by chpatrick » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:35 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #784

chpatrick wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you're a typesetter and they just invented computerized printing.

These kinds of comments are so confusing to me, is the work you do day to day really so trivial that you can be wholesale replaced by an LLM?

90% of the actual code writing? Yes. The actually valuable part is coming up with the ideas for what to do.

There isn't going to be a great reset where everyone goes back to coding by hand any more than we're going back to typesetting by hand.

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

#816

Post by etruong42 » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

lukan wrote: post #431

fc417fc802 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another context I might see it as vendor financing. However given that Google and Anthropic are competitors in this segment and given that Google has previously invested in them I'd rather see this as a sort of bartered stock purchase presumably for the purpose of hedging against failure. If Anthropic wins the race and it turns out to be winner takes all and you happen to own half of Anthropic then you still win h…

How can there be a "winner takes it all" situation with AI? OpenAI lead the game while they were best. Antrophic followed and got better. Now openAI is catching up again and also google with gemini(?) ... and the open weight models are 2 years behind. Any win here seems only temporary. Even if a new breakthrough to a strong AI happen somehow.

The first one to reach AGI is the winner-takes-all. AGI or something similar will result in exponential progress to super-intelligence since AGI can just improve itself.

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

#817

Post by jeremyjh » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

CoolThings wrote: post #410

scottyah wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one that serves a few functions- Tracks certificates and licenses (you can export certs in any of the majorly requested formats), a dashboard that tells you when licenses and certs are close to expiring, a user count, a notification system for alerts (otherwise it's a mostly buried Teams channel most people miss), a Downtime Tracker that doesn't require people to input easily calculatable fields, a way for tea…

>> a dashboard that tells you when licenses and certs are close to expiring Or, Excel > Data > Sort > by the Date column. No dashboard needed, no app needed.

Or better yet just remember it all, no spreadsheet needed either!

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

#818

Post by jeremyjh » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #417

nvader wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not try it yourself? Inference providers like BaseTen and AWS Bedrock have perfectly capable open source models as well as some licensed closed source models they host. You can use "API-style" pricing on these providers which is more transparent to costs. It's very likely to end up more than 200 a month, but the question is, are you going to see more than that in value? For me, the answer is yes.

What makes you think I haven't tried it myself? The "costs" are subsidized, it's a loss-leader.

Bedrock and other third party open weight hosted model costs are not subsidized. What could possibly be the investment strategy for being one of twelve fly-by-night openrouter operators hosting the latest Qwen?

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

#819

Post by trhway » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

duskdozer wrote: post #577

trhway wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Barely an hour goes by without a new 4-page document about something that that everyone is apparently ment to read, digest and respond to, despite its 'author' having done none of those steps, it's starting to feel actively adversarial. well, isn't that what AI can be used effectively for - to generate [auto]response to the AI generated content.

What a delightful world we're building.

ideally we'd delegate all mindless/routine stuff to AI, and we'd dedicate ourselves to the higher creative and scientific pursuits. Somehow though i think that ideal will come with some adjustments/distortions/bugs :)

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

#820

Post by 2df » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:02 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #478

dmix wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the whole thing of first mover advantage being a myth, especially in the tech industry

> Plus the whole thing of first mover advantage being a myth, especially in the tech industry Source? That would be surprising!

Why? Being a first mover only counts for something if it can yield exclusivity that is durable.. you should know this being a VC and all. Real options - hello?

If you want to benefit massively off being a first mover, you better do the work in figuring it out how you are going to acquire exclusivity that lasts long enough that keeps most firms out.