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It's interesting that Amazon don't appear interested in acquiring Anthropic, which would have seemed like somewhat of a natural fit given that they are already
by HarHarVeryFunny 11mo ago
It's interesting that Amazon don't appear interested in acquiring Anthropic, which would have seemed like somewhat of a natural fit given that they are already partnered, Anthropic have apparently optimized (or at least adapted) for Trainium, and Amazon don't have their own frontier model.
It seems that Amazon are playing this much like Microsoft - seeing themselves are more of a cloud provider, happy to serve anyone's models, and perhaps only putting a moderate effort into building their own models (which they'll be happy to serve to those who want that capability/price point).
I don't see the pure "AI" plays like OpenAI and Anthropic able to survive as independent companies when they are competing against the likes of Google, and with Microsoft and Amazon happy to serve whatever future model comes along.
- hyperbovine 11mo agoLOL of course they don't want to own Anthropic, else they themselves would be responsible for coming up with the $10s of billions in Monopoly money that Anthropic has committed to pay AMZN for compute in the next few years. Better to take an impressive looking stake and leave some other idiot holding the buck.
- Lionga 11mo ago[flagged]
- rvnx 11mo agoWhy would they buy Anthropic when they already have access to all the tech and source-code of Anthropic for free ? Not only the models but also training data, model architecture, documentation, weights and latest R&D experiments ? Take an instance -> Snapshot -> Investigate. Unless they get caught it is not illegal.
- SeanAnderson 11mo agoIsn't taking an impressive looking stake, in effect, leaving them holding the buck?
- Waterluvian 11mo agoNow I’m no big city spreadsheet man but I bet you “company that owes us billions went belly up” looks better on the books than “company we bought that owes us billions went belly up.”
- stingraycharles 11mo agoIt’s pretty crazy that Amazon’s $8B investment didn’t even get them a board seat. It’s basically a lot of cloud credits though. I bet both Google and Amazon invested in Anthropic at least partially to stress test and harden their own AI / GPU offerings. They now have a good showcase.
- Waterluvian 11mo agoYeah. I bet there’s a win-win in the details where it gets to sound like a lot of investment for both parties to look good but really wasn’t actually much real risk. Like if I offered you $8 billion in soft serve ice cream so long as you keep bringing birthday parties to my bowling alley. The moment the music stops and the parents want their children back, it’s not like I’m out $8 billion.
- michaelbuckbee 11mo agoAmazon also uses Claude under the hood for their "Rufus" shopping search assistant which is all over amazon.com. It's kind of funny, you can ask Rufus for stuff like "write a hello world in python for me" and then it will do it and also recommend some python books.
- hbosch 11mo agoAre you sure? While Amazon doesn't own a "true" frontier model they have their own foundation model called Nova. I assume if Amazon was using Claude's latest models to power it's AI tools, such as Alexa+ or Rufus, they would be much better than they currently are. I assume if their consumer facing AI is using Claude at all it would be a Sonnet or Haiku model from 1+ versions back simply due to cost.
- somebodythere 11mo agoRufus is a Claude Haiku, yes.
- bcrl 11mo agoI wonder if that sentence will have any discernible meaning 100 years from now.
- reliabilityguy 11mo ago> I assume if their consumer facing AI is using Claude at all it would be a Sonnet or Haiku model from 1+ versions back simply due to cost. I would assume quite the opposite: it costs more to support and run inference on the old models. Why would Anthropic make inference cheaper for others, but not for amazon?
- bostik 11mo agoThere may well be some "interesting" financial arrangements in place between the two. After all, Claude models are available in AWS Bedrock, which means Amazon are already physically operating them for other client uses.
- runningRicky 11mo agowhy exit now and become a stuffed AI driven animal when you can keep running this ship yourself, doing your dream job and getting all the woos and panties?
- kordlessagain 11mo agoAfter watching The Thinking Game documentary, maybe Amazon has little appetite for "research" companies that don't actually solve real world problems, like Deepseek did.
- stlava 11mo agoThe movie seems like a fluff piece when you find out what has transpired at DeepMind subsequently with slowing down publishing material to “selling out to product” which the founder was hell bent against in the documentary.
- ekropotin 11mo agoMaybe Anthropic simply don’t want to be acquired
- WJW 11mo agoYou understand that doing an IPO is quite literally selling big chunks of yourself to the highest bidder, right?
- ceejayoz 11mo agoSort of. You can do what Zuck did; give your shares more votes, so you stay in control. (He owns 13% of the shares, but more than 50% of the voting power.) That's less doable with an acquisition.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- paxys 11mo agoIn one case your ownership is diluted by maybe 10%, and you keep full decision making power and everything else. In the other it is diluted by 100% and you are now an employee. They are very different outcomes.
- fullstackchris 11mo agouh... thats exactly why anthropic wouldnt want to be acquired? weird response to that comment IMO
- JohnnyMarcone 11mo agoThe current leadership retains power in an IPO. Is there a minimum size chuck one has to sell when IPO-ing? How do you know it will be big chunks?
- sunir 11mo agoNot necessarily controlling stakes.
- nbardy 11mo agoWhy are you assuming Anthropic is for sale? They have a clear path to profitability, booming growth, and a massive and mission driven founding team. They could make more money keeping control of the company and have control.
- graemep 11mo agoAssuming by "they" you mean current shareholders (who include Google and Amazon and VCs) if they are selling at least in part, why would at least some of them not be willing to sell their entire stakes? > They could make more money keeping control of the company and have control. It depends on how much they can sell for.
- disgruntledphd2 11mo ago> They have a clear path to profitability I'd love to see evidence for such a thing, because it's not clear to me at all that this is the case. I personally think they're the best of the model providers but not sure if any foundation model companies (pure play) have a path to profitability.
- JohnnyMarcone 11mo agoWhat do you mean by pure play? Claude code alone is 1B revenue. It's not just the API they make money on. https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-acquires-bun-as-claude-code-reaches-usd1b-milestone https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-acquires-bun-as-cla...
- tapoxi 11mo agoBut there's no moat around these models, they're all interchangeable and leapfrogging each other at a decent pace. Gemini could get much better tomorrow and their entire customer base could switch without issue.
- oldpersonintx2 11mo ago[dead]
- jklinger410 11mo agoAmazon and Microsoft are protecting themselves from the bubble.
- turnsout 11mo agoYes, repackaging and reselling AI is a starkly better business than creating frontier models
- blitzar 11mo agoFinding a use for Ai will be an even better business.
- turnsout 11mo agoIf you can't find a use for AI, you probably haven't given it much of a try. Just one random example: I needed to find experts in a technical field, and gave the problem to Claude Code. Claude put together a comprehensive research plan, dug deep into industry working groups, and produced a prioritized list of experts along with their bios, rationale and LinkedIn profiles. Completely possible for me to do, but it saved me at least a couple hours of Googling.
- epsilonic 11mo agoI think they’re waiting for bargain bin deals once the bubble collapses.
- echelon 11mo agoThis. The market is too new for AI. AI is unquestionably useful, but we don't have enough product categories. We're in the "electric horse carriage" phase and the big research companies are pleading with businesses to adopt AI. The problem is you can't do that. AI companies are asking you to AI, but they aren't telling you how or what it can do. That shouldn't be how things are sold. The use case should be overwhelmingly obvious. It'll take a decade for AI native companies, workflows, UIs, and true synergies between UI and use case to spring up. And they won't be from generic research labs, but will instead marry the AI to the problem domain. Open source AI that you can fine tune to the control surface is what will matter. Not one-size-fits-all APIs and chat interfaces. ChatGPT and Sora are showing off what they think the future of image and video are. Meanwhile actual users like the insanely popular VFX YouTube channel are using crude tools like ComfyUI to adopt the models to their problems. And companies like Adobe are actual building the control plane. Their recent conference was on fire with UI+AI that makes sense for designers. Not some chat interface. We're in the "AI" dialup era. The broadband/smartphone era is still ahead of us. These companies and VCs thought they were going to mint new Googles and Amazons, but it's more than likely they were the WebVans whose carcasses pave the way.
- mrweasel 11mo agoSame for Apple would be my take right now. No point in spending billions trying to build and train an LLM. Better to buy AI services from e.g. OpenAI for a bit, then extract the valuable bits after the crash. The current crop of AI companies can waste money of figuring out what works and what doesn't.
- moralestapia 11mo agoLol, no one would want to buy that trash. Same w/ Perplexity.
- cmiles8 11mo agoWould have made a lot of sense a few years ago, but not now.
- PunchyHamster 11mo agoIt is spending a lot of money to do the same thing (selling the shovels), and gaining maybe a bit bigger cut if the bubble doesn't burst too violently.
- apercu 11mo agoHence the need to cash out.
- boh 11mo agoThey're likely just waiting out the eventual crash and waiting to buy at the resulting fire sale. Microsoft has done a very good job of investing in the space enough to see a potentially lucrative pay out while managing the risk enough to not be sunk if it doesn't pan out.
- Fergusonb 11mo agoSomething something selling shovels in a gold rush.
- solumunus 11mo agoI too would be sitting back and watching my competitors commit insane capital to this unlikely bet.
- tinyhouse 11mo agoAnthropic is a $1T company in the making (by 2030), already raised their last round at ~$200B valuation. Do you really think Amazon can acquire them? They already invested a lot of money in them and probably own at least 20% of Anthropic, which was the smartest thing Jassy did in a while. Not to mention, if Adobe wasn't allowed to buy Figma, do you think Amazon will be allowed to buy Anthropic? No way it's going to be approved. > I don't see the pure "AI" plays like OpenAI and Anthropic able to survive as independent companies when they are competing against the likes of Google, and with Microsoft and Amazon happy to serve whatever future model comes along. One thing you're right about - Anthropic isn't surviving - it's thriving. Probably the fastest growing revenue in history.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoWell, just to show you a microcosm of what happens when VCs find the bigger fool in the public market when they IPO money losing companies…. https://medium.com/@Arakunrin/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-combinator-companies-a-mixed-bag-of-success-and-struggle-58e9a4006f01 https://medium.com/@Arakunrin/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-... > One thing you're right about - Anthropic isn't surviving - it's thriving. Probably the fastest growing revenue in history. Growing revenue and losing money is not “thriving”
- tinyhouse 11mo agoMost companies will much rather have the problem of becoming profitable given amazing revenue growth than the problem of not having growth but being profitable. (e.g. Dropbox)
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoBut many of the companies won’t be profitable at all. I’m sure the investors are happy when they find the “bigger fool” after IPO. But someone who invested in the hypothetical “YC Index Fund” wouldn’t be too happy.
- paxys 11mo agoIt's safe to assume that a company like Anthropic has been getting (and rejecting) a steady stream of acquisition offers, including from the likes of Amazon, from the moment they got proninent in the AI space.
- spprashant 11mo agoI get the feeling Amazon wants to be the shovel seller for the AI rush than be a frontier model lab. There is no moat in being a frontier model developer. A week, month, or a year later there will be a open source alternative which is about 95% as good for most tasks people care about.
- VirusNewbie 11mo agoHaven't they invested hundreds of millions trying to train frontier models?
- spprashant 11mo agoI don't know how much they are spending to be fair. I am basing my observation on the noises they are making. They did put out a model called Nova but they are not drumming it up at all. The model page makes no claims of benchmarks or performance. There are no signs of them poaching talent. Their CEO has not been in the press singing praises about AI unlike every big tech CEO. Maybe they have a skunk-works team on it but something tells me they are waiting for the paint to dry.
- calgoo 11mo agoWell, i have had chats with a few engineers working in Amazon retail and there is talk about adding agents for Ops and similar internal tasks. So there is a bunch of AI related things happening, and like others have said, they rent shovels for the rush, so they will bank all the money without having to compete with the money bonfires that others are burning.
- aurareturn 11mo agoI get the feeling Amazon wants to be the shovel seller for the AI rush than be a frontier model lab. I think this is simply wrong. Don't you think Amazon would love to be in Google's position of having Gemini 3 Pro? The shovel maker will never make more money than a few lucky gold diggers.
- efficax 11mo agowhy would you take on that burn rate when you can invest, get the investment back over time in cloud spend, and maybe make off like bandits when they ipo
- tshaddox 11mo ago> It seems that Amazon are playing this much like Microsoft - seeing themselves are more of a cloud provider, happy to serve anyone's models, and perhaps only putting a moderate effort into building their own models (which they'll be happy to serve to those who want that capability/price point). Or, as a slight variation of that, they think the underlying technology will always be quickly commoditized and that no one will ever be able to maintain much of a moat.
- r_lee 11mo agoI think anyone sane will have had the same conclusion a long time ago. It's a black box with input/output in text, thats not a very good moat. especially given that Deepseek type events can happen because you can just train off of your competitors outputs I've tried out Gemini 2.5/3 and it generally seems to suck for some reason, problems with lying/hallucinating and following instructions, but ever since Bard came out at first, I thought Google would have the best chances of winning since they have their own TPUs, YouTube (insane video/visual/audio data), Search (indexed pages), and their Cloud/DCs and they can stick it into Android/Search/Workspace. meanwhile OpenAI has no existing business, they only have API/Subs as revenue, and they're utilizing Nvidia/AMD I really wonder how things will look once this gold rush stabilizes
- jacquesm 11mo agoBezos is playing it smart: sell shovels to all of the gold diggers. If he partners with one of the gold diggers he won't be able to sell shovels to the remainder.
- aurareturn 11mo agoSure but check out Cisco's market cap vs Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Netflx, etc. A few gold diggers will be worth 10x the shovel maker.
- jacquesm 11mo agoThat's a risk-return issue. Bezos plays it safe within Amazon, and quite unsafe outside of that. By the time he acquires something from Amazon it is because it has proven long-term revenue generation and the shake-out period is done and consolidation is about to start. With AI the shake-out is still to come. So he can afford to wait to eventually acquire the winner or to copy it if he can't buy it. Having very deep pockets enables different business strategies.
- aurareturn 11mo agoYes, it is safe but Amazon will be surpassed by an AI company by 10x in the future if history repeats.
- b00ty4breakfast 11mo ago>It seems that Amazon are playing this much like Microsoft - seeing themselves are more of a cloud provider, happy to serve anyone's models... I guess they're taking the old adage about selling picks and shovels when everyone else is digging for gold to heart
- petesergeant 11mo ago> It's interesting that Amazon don't appear interested in acquiring Anthropic 1. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? 2. Amazon doesn't appear interested in acquiring Anthropic _at its current valuation_. I would be surprised if it's not available for acquisition at 1/10th its current price in the next 3-5 years AI isn't going anywhere, but "prop model + inference" is far from a proven business model.
- rhubarbtree 11mo agoBefore posting this, did you know anything about the cap table of anthropic? Hard to buy a company that is part-owned by your competitors.
- HarHarVeryFunny 11mo agoInteresting point - kind of a poison pill to prevent being acquired.