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Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return
- ryanshrott 7mo agoWow, big money
- ozgrakkurt 7mo agoSo they are basically taking debt from amazon which is not a financial institution?
- ferguess_k 7mo agoEveryone eventually wants to be a landlord and a banker (essentially a debt landlord).
- spwa4 7mo ago> At the heart of this deal is Amazon’s custom chips: Graviton (a low-power CPU) and Trainium (an Nvidia competitor and AI accelerator chip). The Anthropic deal ... Yeah, totally not desperately seeking investment to keep the party going ...
- bombcar 7mo agoIt does seem like the tempo and volume of the music is getting louder and louder as the number of chairs is subtly decreasing, doesn’t it?
- brianjlogan 7mo agoBecause also look at the bond market... It's all coming to a crescendo including the global economic recession indicators which will be a cold sprinkler on the whole party. Gemma4 being able to run on commodity hardware I think is the real win out of this. Pop the bubble. Settle the craziness and the claws. Let scientists and engineers tinker and improve in the background. Hopefully we can have GPUs be affordable for gaming again although I'm starting to think that will never happen.
- bombcar 7mo agoThat's the true end of the hype - not that AI turns out to be a complete waste of time like NFTs (and maybe blockchain itself) were, but that it becomes commoditized and every device runs various size LLMs while the datacenters sit abandoned and used as sets for the next young adult post-apocalyptic TV show.
- zaevlad 7mo agoHope this will let them boost their capacity and offer higher limits on code models...
- jinushaun 7mo agoIsn’t this kind of like the Nvidia/OpenAI deal? Just circulating debt/money
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- maksimov 7mo agoAnd I think Oracle got into it as well, and later suffered
- Symmetry 7mo agoWith NVidia/OpenAI actual graphics cards did change hands. Vendor financing, like when a car dealership gives you a loan to buy a new car, is actually pretty normal.
- ianm218 7mo agoWith chip development you need scale in order to get to the edge. It makes sense to finance demand so you can get to scale it's not like it's a ponzi scheme. Anthropic gets access to limited compute resources and Amazon gets demand to justify increased R&D and capex + feedback from the best users in the field.
- iot_devs 7mo agoSomeone can explain to me what's the expectations for these AI labs? I mostly see their products as commodity at this point, with strong open source contenders. Eventually it will become hard to justify the premium on these models.
- cma 7mo agoEveryone using Claude code on a personal subscription is default opted in to getting their data trained on. Private troves of data like are seen to potentially end up in a winner take all scenario. More data, better models, attracts more users, results in more exclusive data (what Altman calls the data flywheel).
- spenvo 7mo agoPSA: this is true (the defaults), but there's a "Help improve Claude" setting that you can disable here https://claude.ai/settings/data-privacy-controls https://claude.ai/settings/data-privacy-controls It's my understanding that, as long as this is off, Anthropic does not train on Claude Code conversations, inputs/outputs -- if anyone knows otherwise, please tell and provide a link if possible.
- devsda 7mo agoAnthropic is no MS, but strange undocumented bugs can sneak in sometimes.
- johnbarron 7mo ago>> Everyone using Claude code on a personal subscription is default opted in to getting their data trained on This is completely not true if you use AWS Bedrock, and applies to both your private that or in a business context. Its one of their core arguments for the service use. [1] - "...At Amazon, we don’t use your prompts and outputs to train or improve the underlying models in Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker JumpStart (including those from third parties), and humans won’t review them. Also, we don’t share your data with third-party model providers. Your data remains private to you within your AWS accounts..." [1] - https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/securing-generative-ai-data-compliance-and-privacy-considerations/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/securing-generative-ai...
- shubhamjain 7mo agoIf you think you need to spend $100B, does using a third-party cloud provider still make sense? It doesn’t matter what sweet deal Amazon is pitching—in that scenario, you’d want to own your stack. Especially in a hyper-competitive field like this, where margins are going to matter a lot soon. It feels like these hyperscalers are just raising as much as they can giving extremely rosy projections becauses these sooner or later peak is going to be reached (if that hasn’t happened already)
- Tepix 7mo agoSure: If you can't get enough compute by ordering it yourself, make deals with anyone who promises to get you more compute.
- Zababa 7mo agoI think it could make sense to not want to own the stack if you think it's going to cost you velocity/focus? Which is probably the play here. But I'm not certain at all.
- loveparade 7mo agoGood lucking getting GPUs.
- credit_guy 7mo agoHere’s the answer to your queation (from the article) > The Anthropic deal specifically covers Trainium2 through Trainium4 chips, even though Trainium4 chips are not currently available. The latest chip, Trainium3, was released in December. On top of that, Anthropic has secured the option to buy capacity on future Amazon chips as they become available.
- gabrielsroka 7mo ago$25B https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47844891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47844891
- mossTechnician 7mo ago$5B is part of a contact, the remaining $20B is just a non-binding statement that doesn't hold the same weight (but somehow commands the same media fanfare).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- sensanaty 7mo agoI'm no economist, but how exactly does this make sense? Amazon is basically just giving them 5B which will then be used to repay them back 20x that amount??
- Zababa 7mo agoI was wondering the same thing. I think it's something like, they're going to pay for infra anyways, so Amazon pushes them to allocate their spend to AWS in exchange for 5B.
- pwython 7mo ago> Amazon is investing $5 billion in Anthropic today, with up to an additional $20 billion in the future. This builds on the $8 billion Amazon has previously invested. > Today’s agreement will quickly expand our available capacity, delivering meaningful compute in the next three months and nearly 1GW in total before the end of the year. They need a bunch of compute, now. https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-amazon-compute https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-amazon-compute
- victorbjorklund 7mo ago5 billion now vs 10 billion per year in spend on compute that you had to buy anyways (not necessarily at aws)
- ithkuil 7mo agoin exchange for service that presumably a) costs something to amazon to operate (so not pure 100B profit) and b) anthropic would have to spend anyway to operate their business. so basically ... you could view this as a kind of discount, but instead of paying less later, you get some cash now and then pay full later.
- FatherOfCurses 7mo agoI'd bet that Amazon is getting access to chat data (no matter what Anthropic says publicly) and possibly even the ability to change the model to drive business to either Amazon retail or AWS. "Claude I'm evaluating whether I should host my app on AWS or Google Cloud. Provide me with an analysis on my options." "After a detailed analysis, AWS is clearly your better option."
- ChrisArchitect 7mo agohttps://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-amazon-compute https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-amazon-compute https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-invests-additional-5-billion-anthropic-ai https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-invests...
- secondcoming 7mo agoall your GPUs are belong to us
- mikert89 7mo agohacker news is so useless, look at all these negative cynical comments
- takihito 7mo ago[dead]
- anonyfox 7mo agoSounds like moneygrab is accelerating before consumer grade local models are getting good enough for local inference in few years. Huge house of cards here. Demand skyrocketing until it’s suddenly dropping entirely with ondevice inference.
- inciampati 7mo agoI'm already living in this future. In a decent execution framework, with context management, memory via unix, and mechanisms for web search and access, local models are effectively on par with frontier ones. And they can often be much faster. I'll keep paying fees for the AI companies until they stop truly subsidizing and leading. They are getting close to the edge of utility, but we can use their services now to bootstrap their own demise. Long live running your own software on your own computer.
- gwerbin 7mo agoWhat setup are you using? What models, what hardware, what agent harness, etc? I have the vague sense that this is all possible right now, but the amount of tinkering required doesn't seem worth it compared to, like, just not using AI and getting stuff done the old fashioned way.
- mattmanser 7mo agoI just don't believe you. We can all see the vast gulf between paid + open AI in image and video, it's really visible. Compare Grok to wan or LTX or whatever and the difference is vast. There is no debate that those sort of models are 3 or 4 generations behind, because you can't argue with your eyes. But DIYers like you claim that text LLMs are up to scratch with the frontier models? Again, I simply don't believe you. I can't be bothered to download like however many GB it is to find out, because the result is going to be completely underwhelming and going back to 2023. And worse, when these 'open' models do start getting good, what makes you think these companies will carry on open sourcing their models? At the moment they're trying to stay relevant, get investment. When these models do start getting good, they won't give away the weights, they'll sell them. They're not actually open. And then in a year or two your 'open' model will be horrifically out-of-date with completely out of date knowledge, because you can't add to the knowledge of the model, it's stuck at whatever date the data it was trained on finished. So in a year or two, those models will be worthless. That's why Ali, Meta, etc. are giving them away.
- wg0 7mo agoThe best thing for humanity, economy, technology, society, progress and environment is that this scam should come down ASAP.
- DougN7 7mo agoI would like Amazon to give me $1 billion for which I promise, even pinky promise, I will pay them $20 billion someday. What a great deal for Amazon!!
- shevy-java 7mo agoThey owe us money. I think when they rack up the RAM prices, they should pay for the damage they caused here. I don't need AI anywhere, but the increase in RAM prices is annoying me. Thankfully I purchased new RAM for a new computer, say, 3 years ago, so I can hold out for the most part - but sooner or later I have to purchase a new computer, and I really don't see why I should pay more, solely due to AI companies and greedy hardware manufacturers. Simple-minded capitalism does not work - I consider this a racket as well as collusion.
- Rover222 7mo ago[flagged]
- hirako2000 7mo agoI thought vendor financing was illegal.
- sethops1 7mo agoSadly it isn't, and even if it was, it's not like the current administration is enforcing commerce or securities law.
- hirako2000 7mo agoI assumed independent bodies enforced justice. But even from outside the U.S I can sense things are getting blurry. My mistake for believing it was law, it must have been some compliance corporate training mentioning it wasn't tolerated.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- XCSme 7mo agoAnd so the bubble keeps bubbling...
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- fred_is_fred 7mo agoTulip Corp has reached a definitive finance agreement with Rhine. Rhine will invest 5 Billion guilders in Tulip Corp, and Tulip Corp will be buying 100 Billion guilders of fertilizer and irrigation water from Rhine. This helps Tulip Corp ensure that it's critical infrastructure needs are met.
- Argonaut998 7mo agoDoes anyone feel that the jig is almost up? Surely the returns aren’t anywhere close to what investors expect with the sheer amount of cash at this point in time. Are Anthropic and OpenAI rushing to IPO for immediate cash so they can delay the inevitable? Surely this cycle of robbing Peter to pay Paul to pay John to pay Tim must end. We are only just now getting a taste of the “true cost” of these tokens. Then there is a lack of compute bottlenecking everything. Even now I’m looking at the 7.5x rate of tokens for Opus 4.7 Open models are promising and cost a fraction of what they proprietary models cost which the big two are vulnerable to when companies start to feel the cost of tokens. Will data centres be built fast enough and powered sufficiently to lower the cost of compute thus tokens? Is it just a giant Hail Mary to get to AGI ASAP before the economy collapses? Above all else, I simply feel the models have plateaued. I am noticing productivity loss for tasks I deem as “complex”
- rvz 7mo ago> Open models are promising and cost a fraction of what they proprietary models cost which the big two are vulnerable to when companies start to feel the cost of tokens. Anthropic are scared of open weight models and need to fear-monger towards you to continue paying for their models. That's the whole point of their 'safety' marketing narrative, account bans, and Dario being the AI scarecrow scaremongering everyone about nonsense like 'Mythos' towards the world. 'Mythos' is already here in the form of open-weight models that also found the same vulnerabilities as Anthropic did.
- danieldoesbio 7mo agoGenuine question here about the open-weight models finding the same vulnerabilities as mythos thing: is it just a matter of false negatives/positives? I’ve seen a few cases where people show other models (even opus) can find the same vulnerabilities given many passes. Is there some disadvantage to the extra passes that give the claimed Mythos performance extra value (assuming it finds them in less)?
- intothemild 7mo ago
- adamlangsner 7mo agoSo Anthropic essentially got the same 5% cash back deal anyone who has a Visa Prime card gets? “AI Companies: They’re just like the rest of us”
- mark_l_watson 7mo agoI hope this is not off topic, too much: with the current geopolitical situation I expect reduced capacity to manufacture both memory chips and all types of CPUs/GPUs. I base this on news I read from: Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. If I am correct (and I hope that I am wrong!) this will drastically increase the cost of building these new data centers.
- jonluca 7mo ago[flagged]
- PunchyHamster 7mo agoah, the obligatory "my take is better than you damn philistines but I won't even tell it coz else someone might point out my ignorance" comment
- sharts 7mo agoAre taxpayers going to have to bail out these entities when all this insanity settles?
- thinkingtoilet 7mo agoOnly if we let them make us do it. Vote.
- lelanthran 7mo agoThey're already out of money??? Perversely, it appears that the market will remain rational longer than they can remain solvent :-)
- sidewndr46 7mo ago20x return on investment?
- razvanneculai 7mo agoPersonally i have felt like my Pro plan which is like 20 dollars, is like a free subscription somewhere else. I use claude to research and help me complete my code and i feel like i run out of my 5h usage limit in like 30 minutes with Sonnet... I hope that they find a way to forward, because personally im very passionate about AI, and in my opinion if used right its the future. Allthough one thing i cant seem to find, maybe im havent searched enough, but what is the profit of anthropic?
- eagerpace 7mo agoThis kind of overstatement of "investments" has been trending this direction for years. This is called a rebate in any other industry.
- epistasis 7mo agoI've heard that when you start having major spends on AWS you can get some good discounts, but I expected it to be bigger than 5% for $100B!
- upupupandaway 7mo agoIs there a good open source stack to replace Claude or Codex that can be run locally on some advanced hardware?
- apgwoz 7mo agoThe Ed Zitron rant will be phenomenal.
- idiot-savant 7mo ago“Trainium”, what a retarded name for a chip.
- ath3nd 7mo ago[dead]