Anthropic raises $13B Series F

Impressive round but it seems unlikely this game can go on much longer before something implodes. Given the amount of cash you need to set of fire to stay relevant it’s becoming nearly impossible for all but a few players to stay competitive, but those players have yet to demonstrate a viable business model.

With all these models converging, the big players aren’t demonstrating a real technical innovation moat. Everyone knows how to build these models now, it just takes a ton of cash to do it.

This whole thing is turning into an expensive race to the bottom. Cool tech, but bad business. A lot of VC folks gonna lose their shirt in this space.

I think we underestimate the insane amount of idle cash the rich have. We know that the top 1% owns something like 80% of all resources, so they don't need that money.

They can afford to burn a good chunk of global wealth so that they can have even more global wealth.

Even at the current rates of insanity, the wealthy have spent a tiny fraction of their wealth on AI.

Bezos could put up this $13 billion himself and remain a top five richest man in the world.

(Remember Elon cost himself $40 billion because of a tweet and still was fine!)

This is a technology that could replace a sizable fraction of humamkind as a labor input.

I'm sure the rich can dig much deeper than this.

"This is a technology that could replace a sizable fraction of humamkind as a labor input."

And if it does? What happens when a sizable fraction of humamkind is hungry and can't find work? It usually doesn't turn out so well for the rich.

I don't think most folks think very hard about where most wealth comes from but imagine it just sort of exists in a fixed quantity or is pulled from the ground like coal or diamonds - there's a fixed amount of it, and if there are very rich people, it must be because they took the coal/diamonds away from other people who need it. This leads to catchy slogans.

But it's pretty obvious wealth can be created and destroyed. The creation of wealth comes from trade, which generally comes from a vibrant middle class which not only earns a fair bit but also spends it. Wars and revolutions are effective at destroying wealth and (sometimes) equitably redistributing what's left.

Both the modern left and modern right seem to have arrived at a consensus that trade frictions are a good way to generate (or at least preserve) wealth, while the history of economics indicates quite the contrary. This was recently best pilloried by a comic that showed a town under siege and the besieging army commenting that this was likely to make the city residents wealthy by encouraging self-reliance.

We need abundant education and broad prosperity for stability - even (and maybe especially) for the ultra wealthy. Most things we enjoy require absolute and not relative wealth. Would you rather be the richest person in a poor country or the poorest of the upper class in a developed economy?