People should really look at cash flow statements instead of just earnings. Anthropic published one and their cash flow was positive for the first half of this year.

That doesn't mean all the circular financing won't be a problem, but people keep drawing the wrong conclusions from the negative earnings, which are relevant to investors but not so much to the viability of the business.

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Spartan-S63 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wasn’t that also influenced by their discounted compute with SpaceX? I was under the impression the cash flow positive news was highly dependent on a lot of limited-time discounting that wouldn’t last.

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ac29 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The data published in their S1 says they took a $693M operational loss in the first half of this year.

	▲	barrkel 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That is from the increase in the share price, because they owe that in shares and the share price is higher now. On the other side is the IPO, it balances the books but it doesn't count as an asset today, whereas the promised shares count as a debt today. They are cash flow positive, $3.4 billion in H1. That means they're making money.

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smallnix 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Re: positive Cashflow

Was that the one where they removed a bunch of big positions to make it positive (was it training cost, I forgot)?

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bagacrap 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What I don't understand about the circular financing is how does it not violate antitrust? All these supposed rivals own huge stakes in each other. Are they really competitors?

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mapt 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Zaibatsu - Clearly antitrust.

Keiretsu - perfectly acceptable business relationship preferences that in no way require governments to regulate their GDP growth / campaign donation black box machine.

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trollbridge 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The entire economy relies on circular flows. That’s why we look at something called “net profit”.

	▲	beepbooptheory 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This made me chuckle, thanks.
	▲	irididifudud 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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thewhitetulip 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well rules stopped mattering to BigCo many hears ago

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spwa4 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Strange how you complain about this for circular flows when of course the GOAT of circular flows is the money system itself

govt prints money (FED) -> government -> banks -> (economy) -> tax -> government

And the second "great circle"

govt loans money (FED) (money that doesn't exist, which isn't a problem if you can print money) -> banks -> (economy) -> loan repayment -> money gets "unprinted"/destroyed

Everything about the economy is a great circle. You will also understand after a while, if you wish for the economy to remain stable, this must be the case. You can't change it without either hyperinflation and extreme "capital flight" (between quotes because of course in that circumstances capital will run into gold or other physical resources), by either vastly overheating or stopping the economy.

And yes, most instances are of the overheating kind. The only case of stopping the economy was accidental (despite many warnings), in other words, yes, it was Republicans. But last time that happened, even republicans could decide to change course. Of course, only once huge damage was done.

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randbyte 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Way more people complain about this too, if you pay attention to all the US inflation and national debt anxieties. It’s clearly unsustainable and driving interest rates up steadily.

	▲	mpyne 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		People complain about the imbalance between economy supply and economy demand leading to inflation and debt concerns. The complaint isn’t that the economy is “circular”, how else could it work with 3 or more people engaged in commerce? Neither of those things get fixed on different ways to manage the money supply either, it’s not as if they didn’t have national debts or inflation while on the gold standard.

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samiv 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Government doesn't print money. FED is a private institution.

	▲	randbyte 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Every FED governor is appointed by POTUS.

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cyanydeez 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

people should look at dividends rather than anything else; but the people who matter at these scales are just dick measuring and don't care about anything to do with the actual economics of the system.