Meta took aim at Anthropic. It’s also one of the AI firm’s largest customers
The situation illustrates the friend-foe relationships underlying the artificial intelligence race
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[SAN FRANCISCO] Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, recently took aim at rival Anthropic.
Without naming the artificial intelligence startup or its CEO Dario Amodei, Zuckerberg said leading AI labs were trying to consolidate power while they painted the future as “filled with doom”.
“If those labs lead,” he wrote in a 6,500-word essay published on Aug 10, “then the balance of power will favour larger institutions over individuals”.
But even as Zuckerberg publicly criticised Anthropic, his own company had privately helped its rival to rise in power.
Behind the scenes, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has become a heavy user of Anthropic’s AI products – so much so that it has turned into one of Anthropic’s largest customers, according to five people with knowledge of the companies.
At one point this year, Meta internally projected that it could spend as much as US$10 billion annually on Anthropic’s AI models, said two of the people, who declined to be identified discussing private information.
Meta and Anthropic have long competed, but the extent to which they are financially intertwined has not been previously reported.
Meta is so reliant on Anthropic’s AI models that it has used them to power and test a coming AI product called Hatch, four people familiar with the matter said.
Zuckerberg has described Hatch as Meta’s next breakthrough, a personal “agent” that works “24/7 on your behalf to help achieve your goals and improve your life, your health, your relationships, your finances”.
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Meta has cut back on some Anthropic spending, but is still spending hundreds of millions of dollars a month on the startup’s tools, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The social media giant’s leaders are aware their spending could affect Anthropic as it heads towards a blockbuster initial public offering that could value it at US$2 trillion, two people with knowledge of the company said.
Nat Friedman, Meta’s head of AI product, has told some employees that if Meta uses only its own coding tools or ones from OpenAI, it could lower Anthropic’s revenue before its IPO, the people said.
“It’s like watching duelling generals compete on the battlefield,” said Tomasz Tunguz, an investor at Theory Ventures, a venture capital firm. “Everybody’s gunning to try and destabilise that IPO.”
Meta and Anthropic declined to comment. NYTIMES
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