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Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors

(www.nytimes.com)
989 points acomjean | 5 comments | 05 Sep 25 19:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.27s | source
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arjunchint ◴[05 Sep 25 20:49 UTC] No.45143425[source]▶
Wait so they raised all that money just to give it to publishers?

Can only imagine the pitch, yes please give us billions of dollars. We are going to make a huge investment like paying of our lawsuits.

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Wowfunhappy ◴[05 Sep 25 20:53 UTC] No.45143457[source]▶
From the article:

> Although the payment is enormous, it is small compared with the amount of money that Anthropic has raised in recent years. This month, the start-up announced that it had agreed to a deal that brings an additional $13 billion into Anthropic’s coffers. The start-up has raised a total of more than $27 billion since its founding in 2021.

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slg ◴[05 Sep 25 21:20 UTC] No.45143756[source]▶
Maybe small compared to the money raised, but it is in fact enormous compared to the money earned. Their revenue was under $1b last year and they projected themselves as likely to make $2b this year. This payout equals their average yearly revenue of the last two years.
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1. masterjack ◴[05 Sep 25 21:32 UTC] No.45143873[source]▶
I thought they were projecting 10B and said a few months ago they have already grown from a 1B to 4B run rate
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2. privatelypublic ◴[05 Sep 25 22:12 UTC] No.45144268[source]▶
It doesn't matter if they end up in chapter 11... If it kneecaps all the other copyright lawsuits. I won't pretend to know the exact legal details. But I am (unfortunately) old enough that this isn't my first "giant corporation benefits from legally and ethically dubious copyright adjacent activities, gets sued, settles/wins." (Cough, google books)
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3. slg ◴[05 Sep 25 23:26 UTC] No.45144918[source]▶
Here is an article that discusses why those numbers are misleading[1]. From a high level, "run rate" numbers are typically taking a monthly revenue number and multiplying it by 12 and that just isn't an accurate way to report revenue for reasons outlined in that article. When it comes to actual projections for annual revenue, they have said $2b is the most likely outcome for their 2025 annual revenue.

[1] - https://www.wheresyoured.at/howmuchmoney/

4. utyop22 ◴[06 Sep 25 00:18 UTC] No.45145264[source]▶
Personally I believe in the ideal scenario (for the fed govt.) these firms will develop the tech. The fed will then turn around and want those law suits to win - effectively gutting the firms financially and putting the tech in the hands of the public sector.

You never know, its a game of interests and incentives - one thing for sure - does does the fed want the private sector to own and control a technology of this kind? Nope.

5. stingraycharles ◴[06 Sep 25 00:55 UTC] No.45145542[source]▶
But what are the profits? 1.5B is a huge amount, no matter what, especially if you’re committing to destroying the datasets as well. That implies you basically used 1.5B for a few years of additional training data, a huge price.