upvote
I have a hard time believing that making “a really good harness” justifies pre-ordering half the world’s GPU compute for years in advance.
reply
It doesn't. But it did stop a lot of other projects in their tracks because the hardware cost suddenly more than doubled.
reply
Did you really read me whole comment and come way with "a really good harness"?
reply
>Anthropic is not in the model business. They were smart and they are building productivity ecosystem business... It's at least a Google Docs killer if not an M365 killer.

Google Workspace revenues are something like $25bn/q, and that's the entire workspace division, (including enterprise gmail sales, so the productivity suite is meaningfully smaller than that figure). It's taken Google a long time to carve that slice out of Microsoft's entrenched market position. It's not small money, but they'd basically be going to war with two of the largest and most profitable companies in history on their turf.

I don't think they can credibly take that business plan to the market and say it'll be worth $1.75tn. They're all-or-nothing on being in the model business, and everything else is superfluous.

reply
What do you think Google Workspace would sell for, if Google divested?

$100B/year in revenue; SaaS so call it 70% gross margin, 30% net, NPV is about $500B.

Not enough if you think that's the only revenue Anthropic could every have. But even if they only peel off $100B NPV, it's incremental to an IPO valuation.

reply
>claude code

The same one that leaked itself a few months ago?

reply
The same way a source code leak of M365 would totally wipe out its revenue?
reply
M365 is a terrible example
reply
Hard to argue with that level of depth
reply
Not everything needs to be an argument, and regardless you didn't change my mind

The value is in the harness! The harness leaked itself

reply
I mean, a lot of people before them were "not in the model business" (Cursor et al) and it seems they got disintermediated by the model companies. Step 1 is still to have the best model, or hope for model progress to taper out.
reply
Vertical integration is hugely valuable, but revenue comes from the top of the stack, not the bottom.

Apple makes great margins on hardware. They are 100% not in the CNC milling business. But their investments at that low level and vertical integration allow for higher margins at the top.

Cursor had... nothing. A minor, indefensible value add to a much larger and wealthier supplier.

reply
> or hope for model progress to taper out

No, that would kill them for sure. Or did you mean 'open model progress'?

reply