Googles giving them something thats a lot more scares to them then dollars, large volumes of chips quickly.
If you gave anthropic 10b cash they couldn't get chips in the 0-6mo timeframe at scale. Anthropic is suffering reputational damage due to choices they have to make around capacity constraints.
Google, AWS, and Azure are the only people who can help them so they hold the cards, thus the good terms.
googles multiple businesses and gemini isn't the largest one.
anthropic is the anchor external customer of tpu's and nvidia is worth more than all of google. If tpu's actually breakout as a viable alternative over the next few years for multiple clients the business could easily be worth as much as search, maybe more.
You essentially have to run in google to use them and that probably limits their ability to breakout. Anthropic might be doing this deal as a way to shore up their supply chain and cost of both inference and training by leveraging Google's hardware and chip manufacturing expertise.
TPUs are not that portable and easy for both inferencing and training. It has since improved a lot with their effort on the torch backend (XLA/TorchTPU) and JAX though.
But as far as i know it currently supports just that + tensorflow (which nobody uses it anymore, least here). And last we tried, so much of our kernels needs rework that it’s not worth the effort.
This may change since ironwood but we haven’t tried that generation.
there are literally not enough tpu's on earth for them to break out, every tpu thats been made is in use, the spike in demand is recent and google has heavy competition for foundry space.
Possibly because they just haven't been able to manufacture enough of them yet to be a viable business to others? They're fighting everyone else for foundry space and time.
meta has laid off 34,800 people in just the large scale rounds we know about in the past 5 years.
they're growing at high teens % a year and have record profits and a centi-billionaire has complete control. whats going on there is gross, even compared to the finance world of yearly culling of the bottom few % its gross.
There are a few US companies that crossed beyond the carelessness of us work culture to flat out hostile and metas one of them.
the suburbs around new york are some of the richest in the world. Scardsale, every town near the ct border, rye, huge parts of li, montclair nj and the towns around it.
the average household net worth in westchester which is a huge county is $1m, thats on the same tier as wealthy parts of any major city.
Sames true of the suburban sprawl of the bay area and dc.
I'm not sure you're contradicting the parent. There are "elite" suburbs/coastal towns surrounding a lot of "elite" cities. There's something of a preference (and life stage) whether someone has a nice condo in a city or a nice suburban/exurban home (or admittedly both in some cases). The balance doubtless varies depending on the locale; there are some cities that aren't generally considered very desirable while some of thee suburbs/exurbs/nearby smaller cities are.
Net worth means little when you have to spend 2+ hours commuting via public transit 5 out of 7 days per week, so that you basically only live for weekends. Obviously, it's a choice to give up your 30s/40s for a secure 50s/60s or whatever, but the definition of "wealth" is not so clear to me in that scenario.
america has a wealth per adult of 551,350
germany has a wealth per adult of 256,180
if you exclude the top 10 highest wealth holders in each country its
543,385 vs 252,811.
america's a rich country compared most other countries its also got huge wealth in equality because its top .001% is something that doesn't exist anywhere else
Now compare what you can get for that money in both countries, and you will inevitably discover that the German is wealthier in every way that matters.
Counterpoint, when I lived in Spain, I had to remember never to talk about money with the locals in any way. They were poorer than anyone I have ever met in the US. They literally had to go without water at times because they couldn't afford to buy a bottle for $2. And there is no such thing as free water there. And this was in Barcelona, their richest city. For reference, everything there is about half the cost of the US but their average income was 1/4 of the US.
PS The only thing Germany is richer in than the US is snobbery and rudeness. Seriously, I wouldn't live there for any amount of income or cost.
ssshhhh ... in reality it's of course the case that the poorer a country is, the more unequal it is. In Pakistan the gulf between rich and poor is easily 100x what it is in the US.
The most luxurious hotels in the world, the most decadent, aren't in Washington. They're in places like Teheran. Like Islamabad. Like Kinshasa. Things like, hotels where 5 prostitutes on standby per room is standard.
The richest people in the world are people like Putin and Xi Jinping. Communists "defending the rights of the people". And whoever it is in the US at the moment don't remotely compare to them in wealth.
And what people are complaining about, in the US, but equally in Germany (well I only know about the Netherlands firsthand, but ... look at the map) is not how good or bad they have it. Simply about "how bad it's getting". In other words, they're complaining this year it's a little bit worse than last year. A tiny little bit. THAT, they can't deal with. Absolute level of wealth? Income inequality? Doesn't really matter.
And the scary question is if they'll go to war over that. They certainly have in the past.
There's a point somewhere where the money becomes a scorecard - once you can afford the best room at the Kinshasa luxury hotel, you can't really "go higher" on that axis, you need something else.
Of course you can go higher. Haven't you read how Kim Jong Un does it? Well, communism of course, and [1]
Sure you can afford the best room. But can you afford 100 prostitutes on standby? Choice matters.
Sure you can afford the best room with 100 prostitutes. But can you afford to give 100 of your "friends" rooms with 10 prostitutes each? Can you afford to have the hotel just kick every other guest out at your whim?
Can you afford to just own the entire hotel, have it fully staffed in case you drop by with 100 friends, 24/7? (ie. what Putin does) [2]
How about 1000? (totally not a reference to Erdogan's Palace that one) [3]
To go back to North Korean "socialism"'s accomplishments: can you have such a hotel on wheels?
How about 1000, but give each of those 1000 servants in addition to the prostitutes.
i dont think you need to make it malicious, this is what not having enough compute looks like in practice.
its true of gpt5, its true of why antigravity rate limits, and its true of claude.
there is no possible action thats not user hostile when you dont have enough compute. You either reject customers which is hostile and kills your companies growth or you do the best you can with what you have.
its not like these companies under built, they're building as fast as they can.
I mean if a corps goals dont align with their customers (which almost universally they do not), its pretty safe to assume every action is malicious. Anthropic need to generate profit from a service where users burn cash like it's the weimar republic, every choice they make will be to the detriment of the user up until users stop paying.
If you gave anthropic 10b cash they couldn't get chips in the 0-6mo timeframe at scale. Anthropic is suffering reputational damage due to choices they have to make around capacity constraints.
Google, AWS, and Azure are the only people who can help them so they hold the cards, thus the good terms.
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