4 ms·

I also suspect there is a price fixing agreement between all of the inference providers for Claude (such as Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, etc).

wmf 3mo ago
"Price fixing" isn't the correct term here but yes, it's very common to have the same price across different retailers/resellers.
- charcircuit 3mo ago
  There is a difference between the market discovering a price and a bunch of retailers/resellers entering an agreement to sell at a specific price.
vikramkr 3mo ago
I doubt there's any sort of criminal behavior there - the model is anthropic's up and anthropic probably charges a very expensive license fee that's the same for all of them, and their cogs on compute aren't going to be wildly different, so the main drivers of the cost are roughly the same and they're all offering customers the same end product so the prices would likely also be similar in the end
- charcircuit 3mo ago
  Do you really think there is nothing someone could do to make it a fraction of a percentage cheaper to serve like having access to cheaper electricity or a more mature cloud management software. Even saving a fraction of a penny on the prices can make a different due to how much volume people are paying for.
- weird-eye-issue 3mo ago
  Requiring the exact same product to be set at a specific price across providers would not be criminal behavior, lol
  - krzyk 3mo ago
    It is breaking competition. Would you like all products everywhere be priced like their producers want?
    - weird-eye-issue 3mo ago
      You seem terribly confused. Manufacturers are almost always able to set prices. That is not anti-competitive because it does not imply they are colluding with their competition...
      - charcircuit 3mo ago
        A fixed price does not let stores compete with each other. Blocking competition is anticompetitive.
      - krzyk 3mo ago
        No manufacturers might suggest prices, they can't set them, not in any sensible country. If they do, they do it secretly and when governments find about that they are going to receive a big fine, together with shops that colluded with them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing
    - vikramkr 3mo ago
      The competition is between openai and anthropic, if there are price agreements between them that's absolutely price fixing. Or if there's collusion between the cloud providers to inflate compute. I would expect Amazon and gcp to both pay about the same in license fees to anthropic for their models though because they're paying for the same thing. If I buy an apple for a dollar at one store and an apple for a dollar at another store - maybe there's price fixing, or maybe that's just the cost of apples at the moment.
      - charcircuit 3mo ago
        >The competition is between openai and anthropic In capitalism there are many many competitions going on at the same time. Both models can compete and inference providers can compete for costs. In your apple example if at the same stores you saw "open" apples having different prices and having sales you might question if the costs of those frontier apples are not being manipulated.

wmf 3mo ago

"Price fixing" isn't the correct term here but yes, it's very common to have the same price across different retailers/resellers.

charcircuit 3mo ago
There is a difference between the market discovering a price and a bunch of retailers/resellers entering an agreement to sell at a specific price.

vikramkr 3mo ago

I doubt there's any sort of criminal behavior there - the model is anthropic's up and anthropic probably charges a very expensive license fee that's the same for all of them, and their cogs on compute aren't going to be wildly different, so the main drivers of the cost are roughly the same and they're all offering customers the same end product so the prices would likely also be similar in the end

charcircuit 3mo ago
Do you really think there is nothing someone could do to make it a fraction of a percentage cheaper to serve like having access to cheaper electricity or a more mature cloud management software. Even saving a fraction of a penny on the prices can make a different due to how much volume people are paying for.
weird-eye-issue 3mo ago
Requiring the exact same product to be set at a specific price across providers would not be criminal behavior, lol
- krzyk 3mo ago
  It is breaking competition. Would you like all products everywhere be priced like their producers want?
  - weird-eye-issue 3mo ago
    You seem terribly confused. Manufacturers are almost always able to set prices. That is not anti-competitive because it does not imply they are colluding with their competition...
    - charcircuit 3mo ago
      A fixed price does not let stores compete with each other. Blocking competition is anticompetitive.
    - krzyk 3mo ago
      No manufacturers might suggest prices, they can't set them, not in any sensible country. If they do, they do it secretly and when governments find about that they are going to receive a big fine, together with shops that colluded with them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing
  - vikramkr 3mo ago
    The competition is between openai and anthropic, if there are price agreements between them that's absolutely price fixing. Or if there's collusion between the cloud providers to inflate compute. I would expect Amazon and gcp to both pay about the same in license fees to anthropic for their models though because they're paying for the same thing. If I buy an apple for a dollar at one store and an apple for a dollar at another store - maybe there's price fixing, or maybe that's just the cost of apples at the moment.
    - charcircuit 3mo ago
      >The competition is between openai and anthropic In capitalism there are many many competitions going on at the same time. Both models can compete and inference providers can compete for costs. In your apple example if at the same stores you saw "open" apples having different prices and having sales you might question if the costs of those frontier apples are not being manipulated.