Anthropic Invests $50b in Us AI Infrastructure
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Anthropic announces a $50B investment in US AI infrastructure, sparking skepticism among commenters about the feasibility and financials behind the claim.
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Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
Good luck paying that back, especially as AI is basically commodity now.
Also,
> customers that each represent over $100,000 in run-rate revenue—has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.
isn’t unconvincing.
They buy hardware, replace it as the years go on, and continue doing business.
The investment isn't just in raw compute - they have to build buildings, pay staff, and other things. For the hardware and software - they just keep pace as all the other computing companies have to.
> Anthropic serves more than 300,000 business customers, and our number of large accounts—customers that each represent over $100,000 in run-rate revenue—has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.
Let me deconstruct that:
> Anthropic serves more than 300,000 business customers
Hard fact. No qualification on spend or activity, are they on trails or fully paid with contracts and minimum spend
> and our number of large accounts—customers that each represent over $100,000 in run-rate revenue
run-rate revenue is an extrapolation. (https://www.fool.com/terms/r/run-rate/) That could be buisnesses that trail anthropic for a month, spend 24K and think "fuck thats expensive" and stops spending. average that over 2 months, then times by 12, boom 100k account.
> has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.
no starting base....
Its unconvincing, because its smoke and mirrors. Give me the numbers of paying customers, over time with revenue. Then show the opex/capex.
Is it really a surprise later, the cost?
We have a project at the moment thats all based around sharepoint. They have ingested many tens of thousands of documents, and are expecting that MS copilot studio will be able to a) RAG and B) produce meaningful answers with a 4 line prompt.
And then cut spending. The point is, run-rate revenue, which is extrapolated rather than _actual_ can easily mask this change, depending on how its calculated.
Thanks!
https://www.reddit.com/r/EconomyCharts/comments/1lwdwd6/anth...
I absolutely love Anthropic; but I am worried about the fiscal wall they will hit that will ratchet up my opex as they will need to steeply raise prices.
I am sceptical an LLM foundation model company can get away with low human services either directly on its own payroll or by giving up margin to a channel of implementation partners. Thats because the go to market requires organizational change on the customer sites. That is a lot of human surface area.
While Gross margins numbers are estimates vary widely, 40-60% numbers some analysts throw around seems realistic.
In an equity only company that is good enough metric , but all the major players have long since now transitioned to also raising debt.
The debt would need to be serviced even if fresh training investments stopped fully .
The cost of debt servicing would depend on the interest rates and the economy etc inaddition to the risk of the debt itself.
Quite possible that model companies would need to jack prices even with good gross margins to handle their debt load.
If trends continue, all investment in the economy will be directed by about 6 people at a big AI company, and what will money mean at that point?
> The project will create approximately 800 permanent jobs
Approximately $62.5 million per permanent job created!
the excess can be sold to the grid.
it's really the only way forward. seems like a win/win.
Natural gas is the main reason our emissions have gone down as it replaces coal.
Also I don't think forcing is necessary. These datacenters want to, why impose more regulations.
Aim higher. Do better.
I really hope we go all in on nuclear though, with some natural gas and get rid of the windmills. Solar, hydro, geothermal can stay where it makes sense.
Unfortunately our skies and land are littered with windmills made out of unrecyclable polymers that are terrible for raptors.
Queue someone quoting how many cats kill birds like competing with the top predator is a good thing, or ignoring the fact that we put these in raptors' wind streams and cats don't hunt those large birds (which are usually endangered)
Our kids deserve nuclear.
Like our lands and oceans are not littered with drilling platforms and fracking stations already
That being said, I would like to reduce those drilling rigs. However I don't see their existence justification for more damage by putting up windmills.
It's classic whataboutism. Both things can be harmful.
Below is an exercise to help point it out.
> Like our lands and oceans are not littered ... already
Without the "what about" subject, this statement looks bad doesn't it?
That reasoning is no different than the people who see trash on the ground and throw more because it's already trashed, so why not.
> made out of unrecyclable polymers
Does this mean you support banning plastic straws too? All plastics are essentially unrecyclable.
> Our kids deserve nuclear.
By all means. If it can be done as cheaply as wind and solar.
You don't know me, but yes birds are a passion of mine.
I don't particularly like drilling oils and we should transition off.
Does that justify the damage windmills do? No.
> Does this mean you support banning plastic straws too? All plastics are essentially unrecyclable.
https://s7d1.scene7.com/is/image/CENODS/10027-cover-casper-o...
I support as little waste as possible. Everything adds up. Especially giant windmills.
> By all means. If it can be done as cheaply as wind and solar.
Nuclear is cheap and safe, it's the damn bureaucracy that's expensive.
Let's get real, stop putting up trash, and start boiling water.
Microsoft struck a deal with Three Mile Island to get a reactor up.
And Amazon is working with Talen Energy.
Might be others I missed.
No. But the states that let companies put trillions of dollars of datacentre and power hardware in their borders will probably reap benefits from it for decades to come regardless of how AI pans out.
There is another way forward, which is not building these data centers, forcing AI companies to use power more efficiently, and use the excess energy production capacity towards the energy transition in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
It's not going to happen, at least not right now, but it's clearly what we ought to do. ChatGPT can wait.
I'm all for more efficient usage, and it's in AI companies best interest to do so to minimize costs.
...but it's a growing industry, it will need more power.
Completing the energy transition is an enormous undertaking. Building huge data centers is a distraction, not a way forward.
It is, however, complete nonsense, and the next few years of failed promises on AGI will eventually bring people to their senses, if a market crash and sustained economic depression doesn't do that first. It would be funny if it wasn't going to cause suffering for millions of people, whether we succeed at AGI or not.
I _like_ AI, I find LLMs and many other aspects of useful, and I am optimistic for the long term prospects of AI. But the rush to try and get to AGI is completely out of control at this point, and the fallout from when the bubble pops will set AI, and our societies, back a long time.
This is not a theoretical concern, it is happening already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN6BEUA4jNU
No, what we should do is put every "large load" electricity customer (including but not limited to these data centers) into their own rate-payer class like they did in Maryland and Oregon instead of lumping them in with everyone else.
Once they are in their own rate-payer class then their rates can be adjusted to pay for the costs of the increased infrastructure that is only needed because they exist (take away data center build-outs and electricity usage is largely flat or falling pretty much everywhere in the US).
I hope the data center developers are paying you to lobby for their ongoing corporate welfare? Because that's what you're basically doing here.
It is, because the electricity companies don't have magic electricity generating machines that can scale infinitely.
To satisfy the new demand which only exists because the data center was built, they spend a lot of money on new infrastructure. They then raise everyone's prices by an equal percentage to support this new infrastructure even though the infrastructure was not needed until the data center was built.
Not charging the data center developers for that extra build out and expecting everyone to absorb the costs for new infrastructure that never would have been built if the data center wasn't built is absolutely corporate welfare.
How? Also, why? Why are datacentres the use to tamp down on versus other industrial and commercial uses?
This reminds me of California rationing residential water use so alfalfa farmers can flood their fields.
I do like the market insulation idea you propose in another comment (I would link to it, but apparently HN doesn't allow that).
Why? American datacentres--of all types--use about 250 TWh per year, with another 500 TWh additional capacity expected by 2030 [1]. American paper manufacturing used about that much energy in 2018 [2].
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from...
[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.p... 2,491tn BTUs ~ 730 TWh
1: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/electric...
In my mind, all the electricity production capacity we can build needs to go to the electrification of the existing economy, not new stuff and especially not the current brand of AI.
Out here in AZ, solar combined with battery would be perfect for datacenters.
If they do so cleanly otherwise they'll dump their externalities on the rest of us.
The most cost effective way to run a datacenter at some definition of "pedal to the metal", 24/7. This is not appropriate for solar, which is why these companies are looking into power sources that are most cost effective when they run pedal to the metal, 24/7, like nuclear.
Additionally, while these data centers do provide some jobs, where states are giving them grants, loans, infrastructure improvement, or otherwise they are ultimately extractive developments (like parking lots) where the wealth flows out from states like Ohio and flows in to states where the CEOs and HQ sit (California, New York, etc.).
I can tell you that people in Ohio across the political spectrum are not happy. We are losing good farm land, utilizing water, and our power costs are going up for negligible benefits at best. But hey now our state representatives can say "Meta is coming to central Ohio". Meanwhile costs are going up and we still have to ship produce in from other countries and states.
If our representatives and governors office thought about this all for about 2 seconds they would require any data center development to include 2x the number of corporate jobs over a certain income threshold or else not approve the development. If the developers balk, then fine it's not like we want them anyway.
The Trump Administration (and for that matter probably any admin) isn't doing jack shit.
[1] https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/state/ohio-regulators-tu...
Not really. We need to insulate consumers from the market that is solving and will solve that problem. That's a financial engineering and policy problem. America is good at the first. We're bad at the second. That implies state and local initiatives should take the lead.
My proposal: one market for essential residential consumption, defined as the median household consumption per region [1]. (If you don't use your allocation, you should earn a rebate.) Above that, market price. Same for preferred commercial uses, e.g. retail and local government.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...
Our utilities are generally regulated, and have some mandate to provide power to residents. If a datacenter creates a sudden dislocation in the demand for power that causes massive unplanned CapEx by the utility, what is the argument in favor of longtime residents having to pay for that CapEx?
What does this mean?
> what is the argument in favor of longtime residents having to pay for that CapEx?
Jobs and tax base. These benefit the middle class more than the poor, hence my redistribution proposal.
Meta's planned gigawatt-scale DC in Louisiana is projected to create ~500 jobs. If energy prices for the state increase by only 20%, that does not feel like something the people of the region would obviously want to do if given the choice.
Are there forecasts energy prices will increase 20% long term?
I don't believe any of this was part of the forecast of 10 years ago, so I would not trust a long-term forecast issued now.
Power law pricing is a good idea.
The argument is that people like air conditioning and lights, so they will pay, or leave.
NIMBYism, but applied to grid power!
At the same time, it is not obvious that utility systems in communities are equipped to respond well to actors who are 1) not local 2) high growth 3) demand rapid deployment 4) are willing to spend flagrantly to move fast.
Put another way: should OpenAI be allowed to pay (say) 10x the going rate[1] for electricity in a region in exchange for being given the right to consume 90% of the electricity generated in that region? What principles should govern this balance and the acceptable price changes? How do those principles extend to determining who should cover CapEx for expansion? Does Texas need the 57 permanent jobs in Abilene that Stargate will generate so badly that millions of Texans should subsidize the richest startup ever?
1 - this is a hypothetical, but OpenAI's Stargate project in Texas is projected to cost multiples of the total assets of any of the large multi-state power generators in the country. None of the utilities are setup to engage with a buyer like that.
We have a tenure-based system for water rights in the Western US, and it's not without its problems. See, e.g., https://www.globalwaterforum.org/2022/11/03/the-paradox-of-u...
You are right... but GOD help us if state and local initiatives take the lead...
Will this pan out? We don't know, no one knows. But this isn't "a scam" there is a plausible future where a large percentage of white collar (or dare I say it, blue collar) work will have an assistant and that assistant requires a considerable subscription (200/mo? 1000/mo?).
Interesting to see all of the leading labs in the West make this bet.
I think that HoloLens has a reasonable demonstration of how to assist blue collar work about 10 years ago (AFAIK it flopped). I would bet a dollar that similar technology augmented with LLMs could be useful to blue collar work.
It's certainly possible. Will it actually happen? IDK.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45896707
For $50 billion?
I think there's a serious problem here.
It’s Capex. Most home construction produces less than a single permanent job on average.
Dams. Power plants. This isn't a difficult set to extend.
$62 million per job does seem a bit more hardware-heavy than reasonable, though...
NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and OpenAI are all already engaging in this type of behavior.
13 billion, not 133, and it was VC investment, not a loan: https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropics-valuation-more-t...
Anthropic didn't give a time frame for that $50 billion spend, but it's probably more realistic than OpenAI's $1.4 trillion spending plan.