Or they want to diversify
> If AI tokens were so magical in creating new value in developing software applications generally, they wouldn't be selling tokens directly.
That requires to build and sell a whole product they have little experience with, competing with their own customers. Not a great place for an AI vendor still trying to establish itself. It’s a lot of distraction, when you already have a lot to deal with the existing business. And strategically not too valuable
I don't understand this argument. I've ran and sold a semi-successful SaaS. The exhausting and frustrating parts are all the things an LLM cannot help you with. Coding the product is not the bottleneck or what grants you success.
Agree, and I think that's the core of my point.
Not that it's irrational or doesn't make sense to sell tokens for purposes of software dev, but that if tokens were a true game changer for success in software dev, they wouldn't be leading with token sales, the same way they're not leading with token sales for security stuff -- it's more like "Contact Sales".
This doesn't follow at all. Anthropic's revenue is growing 10x year over year selling tokens. Their tokens can be super magical, let them enter established industries and displace incumbents, and get 100% annual growth in those industries, and they would still be better off prioritizing selling tokens, because it's a great business.
What your argument shows is that there are limits. Their tokens are not quite powerful enough to make infinite money instantly in every area of software. Admittedly, that does seem true.
We started out with many companies forbidding their employees to use remote LLMs on their source code because of security concerns. Now many companies are starting to believe that they must analyze their all their source code with remote LLMs because of security concerns. When trusting Anthropic becomes normalized, that means they can sell more services that require access to the source code.
If hardware were so magical in creating new value generally, TSMC would be designing the chips instead of selling fabrication as a service.
That is what US chip companies used to do, by the way (back when there was silicon in Silicon Valley, before they got their lunch eaten by Taiwan). If TSMC had to design all of the chips they fabricate now, they would be doing a lot less business. Conversely, if any other company that wanted to design a chip had to build their own cutting-edge fab first, NVIDIA would not exist.
Why do you say that? I reckon lots and lots of companies sell software that aren’t monopolies. Having competition, even stiff competition, isn’t anathema to running a business.
But they can't do that because they aren't monopolies.
Just to clarify, I’m not the person you initially replied to.
> "They wouldn't be selling tokens directly ... They'd hoard them" But they can't do that because they aren't monopolies.
Hoarding them— not selling any of them, but instead using them internally and selling the products created by them — doesn’t at all seem like it would require a monopoly.