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

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.

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.

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.

I thought they were projecting 10B and said a few months ago they have already grown from a 1B to 4B run rate

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)