{"id":423366,"date":"2025-12-04T04:54:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/423366\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T04:54:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:54:30","slug":"anthropics-ai-bubble-yolo-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/423366\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic\u2019s AI bubble \u2018YOLO\u2019 warning"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath<\/a>, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.<\/p>\n

Dario Amodei took the stage at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday to throw punches without naming names.<\/p>\n

The Anthropic CEO spent a good chunk of the interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin drawing a careful line between his company\u2019s approach and that of a certain competitor. When asked about whether the AI industry is in a bubble, Amodei separated the \u201ctechnological side\u201d from the \u201ceconomic side\u201d and then twisted the knife.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the technological side, I feel really solid,\u201d he said. \u201cOn the economic side, I have my concerns where, even if the technology fulfills all its promises, I think there are players in the ecosystem who, if they just make a timing error, they just get it off by a little bit, bad things could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who might those players be? Despite Sorkin\u2019s prodding, Amodei wouldn\u2019t name OpenAI or Sam Altman. But he didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some players who are YOLOing,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s say you\u2019re a person who just kind of constitutionally wants to YOLO things or just likes big numbers, then you may turn the dial too far.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also touched on \u201ccircular deals,\u201d where chip suppliers like Nvidia invest in AI companies that then spend those funds on their chips. Amodei acknowledged that Anthropic has done some of these deals, though \u201cnot at the same scale as some other players,\u201d and walked through the math of how they can work responsibly: A new gigawatt data center costs roughly $10 billion to build over five years. A vendor invests upfront, and an AI startup pays back its share of the deal as revenue grows.<\/p>\n

While he again didn\u2019t name names, he referenced the eye-popping numbers OpenAI has been trumpeting for its compute buildout. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything wrong with that in principle,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, if you start stacking these where they get to huge amounts of money, and you\u2019re saying, \u2018By 2027 or 2028 I need to make $200 billion a year,\u2019 then yeah, you can overextend yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heart of Amodei\u2019s argument was a concept he\u2019s been using internally: the \u201ccone of uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that Anthropic\u2019s revenue has grown tenfold annually for three years, from zero to $100 million in 2023, $100 million to $1 billion in 2024, and now somewhere between $8 billion and $10 billion by this year\u2019s end. (Sam Altman, by comparison, has said<\/a> that OpenAI expects to end 2025 with an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $20 billion.) But even Amodei doesn\u2019t know if Anthropic will hit $20 billion or $50 billion next year. \u201cIt\u2019s very uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n

That uncertainty is concerning, he explained, because data centers take one to two years to build. Decisions on 2027 compute needs have to be made now. Buy too little, and you lose customers to competitors. Buy too much, and you risk bankruptcy. Amodei added, \u201cHow much buffer there is in that cone is basically determined by my margins.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to buy enough that we\u2019re confident even in the 10th percentile scenario,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s always a tail risk. But we\u2019re trying to manage that risk well.\u201d He positioned Anthropic\u2019s enterprise focus, with higher margins and more predictable revenue, as structurally safer than that of consumer-first businesses. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to do any code reds.\u201d<\/p>\n

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