4 ms·

Isn't taking an impressive looking stake, in effect, leaving them holding the buck?

Waterluvian 10mo ago
Now 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 10mo ago
  It’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 10mo ago
    Yeah. 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.
    - beambot 10mo ago
      Echoes of Enron-style accounting "tricks"...
      - vasco 10mo ago
        Amazon gave away datacenter time share in exchange for stock in a startup. That has nothing to do with electricity futures and private credit revolvers.
        BoorishBears 10mo ago
        They said echoes of the tricks.
        vasco 10mo ago
        I've read thousands of pages of Enron history, this has nothing to do with it.
      - stingraycharles 10mo ago
        Why does everybody keep insisting on this “Enron accounting” stuff. LLM companies need shitloads of compute for specialized use case. Cloud vendor wants to become a big player in selling compute for that specialized use case, and has compute available. Cloud provider gives credit to LLM provider in exchange for a part of the company. These are really normal business deals.
  - matthewaveryusa 10mo ago
    This is my thought too. They de-risked any other AI startup from choosing AWS as their platform. If the hype continues AWS will get their 30% margin on something growing like rocket emoji, if they don't at least they didn't miss the boat.
monero-xmr 10mo ago
No! Anthropic goes bankrupt or at least teeters and Amazon buys for pennies
- sysguest 10mo ago
  this might be another possibility -- but why even bother to buy anthropic anyways, if not for the patents? the talent will move out naturally -- amazon can just scoop up with its bucket (*not s3)

Now 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 10mo ago
It’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 10mo ago
  Yeah. 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.
  - beambot 10mo ago
    Echoes of Enron-style accounting "tricks"...
    - vasco 10mo ago
      Amazon gave away datacenter time share in exchange for stock in a startup. That has nothing to do with electricity futures and private credit revolvers.
      - BoorishBears 10mo ago
        They said echoes of the tricks.
        vasco 10mo ago
        I've read thousands of pages of Enron history, this has nothing to do with it.
    - stingraycharles 10mo ago
      Why does everybody keep insisting on this “Enron accounting” stuff. LLM companies need shitloads of compute for specialized use case. Cloud vendor wants to become a big player in selling compute for that specialized use case, and has compute available. Cloud provider gives credit to LLM provider in exchange for a part of the company. These are really normal business deals.
- matthewaveryusa 10mo ago
  This is my thought too. They de-risked any other AI startup from choosing AWS as their platform. If the hype continues AWS will get their 30% margin on something growing like rocket emoji, if they don't at least they didn't miss the boat.

monero-xmr 10mo ago

No! Anthropic goes bankrupt or at least teeters and Amazon buys for pennies

sysguest 10mo ago
this might be another possibility -- but why even bother to buy anthropic anyways, if not for the patents? the talent will move out naturally -- amazon can just scoop up with its bucket (*not s3)