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Anthropic raises $13B Series F

(www.anthropic.com)
585 points meetpateltech | 2 comments | 02 Sep 25 16:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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llamasushi ◴[02 Sep 25 16:29 UTC] No.45105325[source]▶
The compute moat is getting absolutely insane. We're basically at the point where you need a small country's GDP just to stay in the game for one more generation of models.

What gets me is that this isn't even a software moat anymore - it's literally just whoever can get their hands on enough GPUs and power infrastructure. TSMC and the power companies are the real kingmakers here. You can have all the talent in the world but if you can't get 100k H100s and a dedicated power plant, you're out.

Wonder how much of this $13B is just prepaying for compute vs actual opex. If it's mostly compute, we're watching something weird happen - like the privatization of Manhattan Project-scale infrastructure. Except instead of enriching uranium we're computing gradient descents lol

The wildest part is we might look back at this as cheap. GPT-4 training was what, $100M? GPT-5/Opus-4 class probably $1B+? At this rate GPT-7 will need its own sovereign wealth fund

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sidewndr46 ◴[02 Sep 25 17:29 UTC] No.45106272[source]▶
I'm not an expert at how private investment rounds work, but aren't most "raises" of AI companies just huge commitments of compute capacity? Either pre-existing or build-out.
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1. serf ◴[02 Sep 25 18:51 UTC] No.45107400[source]▶
it's difficult for me to imagine this level of compute existing and sitting there idle somewhere; it just doesn't make sense.

So we can at least assume that whoever is deciding to move the capacity does so at some business risk elsewhere.

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2. sidewndr46 ◴[04 Sep 25 16:07 UTC] No.45128812[source]▶
I've stayed away from the hyperscalers but worked at places where requesting 400 servers for a task was normal and routine.

Understanding scale is a weird thing, that I guess is psychological. I think the different experiences and travels I have made have an impact on this. Despite living for over a decade in Texas I live in one of the most densely populated places. But I recently got to visit Colorado, which is far less populated and has lots of weird places.

You can drive up to the base of the Great Sand Dunes and walk up the first few hills quite easily if you're in good shape. Here's some photos

https://www.hydrogen18.com/p/2024-great-sand-dunes-national-...

If you pull out your smartphone and look at Google Maps, it becomes pretty obvious how insane the scale of the place is. There's no real prohibition on where you can walk there because it isn't necessary. It's so large and the environment is so harsh, you aren't going to cross much of it on foot. Ever.