| ▲ | mixedbit an hour ago |
| I don't get one thing, if agents are so great at developing software at massive scale, why wouldn't Anthropic, instead of just selling tokens to other companies to use its agents, let those agents develop highly profitable services for Anthropic to support their IPO valuation or not require raising money at all? For example, a competitor to Google search. |
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| ▲ | tshaddox 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| That’s kinda like asking why does any company make and sell any tool rather than just using the tool to make money? Why does Milwaukee sell power tools to contractors rather than keeping those tools to themselves to profit from contracting work? |
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| ▲ | pianopatrick 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Well both Microsoft and Google are part owners of Anthropic, and Anthropic uses their data centers. I think those companies would use that leverage to prevent Anthropic from directly competing with them |
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| ▲ | binlog 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Because creating a successful company takes a lot more than writing code. Anthropic could easily build a CRM equivalent to or better than salesforce but they still wouldn’t be able to compete with salesforce. It makes a lot more sense to sell salesforce tokens instead. |
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| ▲ | asdff 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Why would they not be able to compete with salesforce? This isn't some tiny startup. This is one of the most deep pocketed companies in the world. Anthropic has announced they are about to spend 5 salesforces worth of money on cloud expenditures in the next couple years. They are projected to be valued at about 10 salesforces after IPO. Imagine how much money they'd raise if they just said one day "we are going after salesforce bottom line now." It would be like chumming the water. | | |
| ▲ | pianopatrick 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Salesforce is a part owner in Anthropic, they are not separate entities who would compete. |
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| ▲ | zeroonetwothree an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If investment managers are so good at investing why don’t they just make money for themselves instead of trying to get people to invest with them? |
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| ▲ | freecodeio an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | cause they literally do that? they invest their own money, and then they ask people for money to invest for them so they can get a cut out of it too? | |
| ▲ | whatshisface an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Investors have a sound economic reason to diversify but your argument works great for pundits. | |
| ▲ | barumrho an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Some do exactly that? |
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| ▲ | tantalor an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > For example, a competitor to Google search What do you think Claude (chatbot web interface) is? |
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| ▲ | ffsm8 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | What do you think it uses to search to web? | | |
| ▲ | rockdoe an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don't know, but it's a good question? I have a bunch of test questions that Claude is unable to solve using the web, any version, Fable 5.1 to Haiku 5.5, and pretty much every OpenAI model gets it easily. My only explanation is that Anthropic's search backend sucks. |
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| ▲ | platevoltage 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Most of the time If I ask it about a current event, it won't actually search the web until I tell it to. It will just give me outdated information in its training data, extremely confidently. | | |
| ▲ | tshaddox 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I use the ChatGPT general purpose interface rather than Claude, and this is not at all my experience. ChatGPT will almost always do one or more web searches for any query about recent or historical events. |
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| ▲ | klustregrif 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is more money in selling shovels than you can ever win by having a monopoly on really effective shovels. They don't need to build a competitor to Google there's 300 companies throwing money at them while they build the "next google" and even if they all fail Anthropic still wins. |
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| ▲ | Philpax 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Lack of focus can kill you, too. OpenAI learnt this the hard way: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-shuts-down-sora-ipo-ai-su... |
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| ▲ | ihumanable 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Lack of focus, like building your own SCM | | |
| ▲ | jitl 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | it takes orders of magnitude more focus to target "Market: World" vs targeting "Market: my company's employees". For example in enterprise software, you need sales people. for internal software, usually the dev build it is fine for the job. |
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| ▲ | Razengan 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I was upset at that for a bit. And they removed Group Chats too. Maybe that's their way of becoming Google? |
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| ▲ | titzer an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > a competitor to Google search Fielding a web index takes a massive amount of compute and storage of a very different kind than what Anthropic is using. AI is extremely heavy on GPU, maybe somewhat on storage but (comparatively) light on CPU. They need CPU to train coding agents, obviously, but scaling to a billion user web search is a whole different thing. |
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| ▲ | mdbug 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | You have no idea. They have the entire internet and everything else that’s ever been written anywhere they could get their hands on.
I highly doubt they use Google internally for their web searches. Get a Let’s Encrypt certificate for any website that isn’t published anywhere else. The Anthropic and OpenAI bots are among the first to read it. | |
| ▲ | jitl 10 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | what do you think they train their ai on? |
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| ▲ | jakeydus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In a gold rush you want to sell the shovels, and in this case the AI is the shovel. |
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| ▲ | ButlerianJihad 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I want to challenge that metaphor a little bit and ask the question: who did sell the shovels in the California gold rush? Can we name a company, or a person, who amassed great wealth and fame for doing it? Can we name a company that survives until 2026, still selling shovels or excavation equipment, still famous for their big break in 1849? I don't think so. However, I can tell you someone who fits all those criteria: Levi Strauss. Strauss founded a company to sell dry goods, as well as tents and jeans, and eventually specialized in those denim jeans. Levi Strauss became a household name and an enduring success of the Gold Rush. Therefore, I say that this motto is flawed; so let's correct it: "In a gold rush, sell the work clothes!" | | |
| ▲ | bradleybuda 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The person who most famously got rich selling shovels in the Gold Rush was Samuel Brannan. You'll find the street named after him just a short walk from both the Anthropic and OpenAI HQs. | |
| ▲ | springtimesun 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | My take on picks and shovels was always a more cynical one. The beauty of the metaphor comes from the fact that after the miners went bust and left their picks and shovels where they lay, they could be collected and sold again to the next dreamer. |
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| ▲ | whatshisface an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Writing code is less than 10% of the average business. |
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| ▲ | marknutter an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Because creating a successful software product is more than just writing code. |
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| ▲ | enjoyyourlife an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Anthropic already has their own WebSearch tool in Claude |
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| ▲ | Razengan 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If farmers are so good at farming, why don't they grow every crop there is and just live for free instead of selling 1-2 crops? |
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| ▲ | ernestrc an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| One word: focus. |
