Anthropic has agreed to purchase $30 billion in Microsoft Azure compute; Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic; and Microsoft up to $5 billion in the startup, the companies announced Tuesday. The deal is the latest in a web of AI firms passing money around in ways that may appear as value creation, nearly doubling Anthropic’s valuation to $350 billion, CNBC reported.
The money circulation also underpins the argument of an AI bubble — a stance that some bankers and industry leaders aren’t refuting. Google’s Sundar Pichai recently told the BBC there are “elements of irrationality” to the AI boom and that “no company is going to be immune [to a bubble burst], including us.” In a podcast last week, Goldman Sachs Research’s Eric Sheridan said, “There are things you can point to right now that rhyme with 1998, 1999.”
As with any of these pooled AI deals, the question is who gets the better end of the bargain and who might be acting out of desperation or irrational exuberance. Microsoft has been hedging its AI bet, avoiding dependency on any one foundation model company while developing its own. Its data centers are designed so they can be used for different kinds of workloads and new AI architectures in the future.
Still, as Pichai pointed out in his interview, a big crash will affect everyone, no matter how savvy their CEO has been.