Dispatch 015
I'm biased because I wrote it, but I think this is a pretty good encapsulation of what people are – and are not – talking about with regard to Google's selling off/spinning out Chrome. That's not going to happen, but it does raise a number of points worth actually thinking about and through...
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
💰 Amazon Invests Another $4 billion in Anthropic – Well, they took the deal. Beyond the money, the key here is that the startup is going to use Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia chips "to train and deploy its largest AI models." This is a little slippery as it's not clear if that means they'll use those chips instead of NVIDIA ones – presumably not, but Amazon's own "primary training partner" wording implies they'll being using the chips first and foremost. Or perhaps they simply mean that Anthropic will now be the largest user of those chips, but much of the training work will continue on NVIDIA? I suspect we'll hear more about this soon as it would obviously be a massive deal if Anthropic was moving the training of Claude from NVIDIA to Amazon's chips – even just most of the training. Frankly, even some of the training. Are those chips really comparable for a company that is in an arms race with OpenAI and Google and everyone else? The $8B Amazon has invested in Anthropic is approaching the almost $14B Microsoft has into OpenAI. Both for minority positions (not that they would want majority positions as regulators would not like that – have they mentioned there's no board seat here? lol) – presumably Amazon's position is far more in the minority given the later entry point, but unlike OpenAI, Anthropic doesn't seem to like to tout their valuation. What does Google, another Anthropic partner with billions invested here think of this? Will more money be coming from them to ensure GCP has at least one seat at the table too, if not in the board room? Back to work everyone, we have a "Remarkable" Alexa to ship. [CNBC]
❌ Mass X-odus: Professionals Desert Elon Musk’s Network – Xwitter has been in a state of decline for a long time now. Beyond the anecdotes we all know and constantly hear, the actual data from multiple sources seems to back this up as well. The only data that doesn't comes from Xitter itself, but they're an unreliable narrator at best seemingly with weasel-y interpretations of usage (how much activity is bot/spam-related now?). Still, when something big is happening in real-time, many rush back to the one service that nails this. But yesterday was interesting in that the Matt Gaetz shitshow seemed to play out in real time just as well on Bluesky as it did on Xitter. Perhaps even better minus the spam and nonsense. If Xitter loses that crown, watch out below. The ultimate Faustian bargain may have been made in steering the network explicitly to help with one end. And it has perhaps given people the means to leave, finally. [FT 🔒]
🔎 The Startup Powering Perplexity, Meta's AI Search – I feel like this has been massively underplayed, but while Bing may be powering ChatGPT's new search abilities, it's the startup Brave which is powering such functionality for many of the other AI startups – and Meta. And yes, Brave is the startup co-founded and run by Brendan Eich, the cofounder of Mozilla, the makers of Firefox. (And co-creator of JavaScript.) That feels like an interesting position to be in – especially with all the renewed talk around search deals, and web browsers for that matter! [Information 🔒]
🙏 In Memory of Enrique Allen – A lovely, thoughtful bit of writing from Craig Mod in honoring his good friend and former roommate, who passed away at the far, far, far too young age of 38. I only had the privilege of meeting Allen a couple of times over the years as we overlapped on a handful of deals, but Mod's piece feels like a window into his life and makes it clear why the outpouring of love for him on social media these past few days was overwhelming. Hugs. RIP. [Roden]
I Wrote...
Apple seems to think they can take 18-months or two years to ship in AI...
Who is going to tell them?
(I am.)
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- Today in Threads-Feeling-the-Heat features, they're revamping search so it's actually useful for, you know, searching. Also, they're overhauling 'trending' so that it shows you, you know, what's trending. [Verge]
- The EU has closed one inquiry into Apple after the complainant withdrew the complaint about their eBook practices – perhaps because it took the EU four years and counting to look into the matter and the entire world has changed like three times since then. The EC would like you to know though, via their statement that this absolves Apple of nothing. NOTHING! [Reuters]
- How can the EU break such malaise that risks the entire bloc becoming "a museum"? Think: more Finland, less Venice. [FT 🔒]
- Forgive the blatant #GoBlue link, but the Michigan Wolverines, desperately in need of a QB following the loss of half their team (and head coach) to the NFL last year, landing Bryce Underwood – the top recruit in the country and Michigan's highest ever rated offensive recruit who grew up 30 minutes from The Big House – is poetic. The cherry on top if taking him away from LSU's Brian Kelly, who, aside from being a bad loser, does jackaroo stuff like this. [ESPN]
- Formula One and ESPN are starting negotiation talks to extend their deal – with F1 wanting a significant increase despite viewing numbers that have stagnated a bit in the past couple years. Might Netflix take the opportunity to zoom in to secure rights to a sport they've helped popularize now that they're actually at least somewhat interested in sports – and ads? If not, and if Disney lets the exclusive negotiating window lapse, Amazon seems primed to swoop in here, as they tried to last time... Apple? [FT 🔒]
- I mean of course Truth Social is going to have their of crypto payment side hustle. How could they not? [NYT]
- So much for that DirecTV and Dish merger as bondholders seemingly killed it (sure feels like it will be back on the table in some capacity as cable continues to collapse and the players consolidate with mergers thawing). [THR]
I Quote...
"Turns out for the 'Twitter Files' crew, 'creeping authoritarianism' isn’t so creepy when it’s your team doing the creeping."
-- Mike Masnick, in an op-ed for MSNBC, pointing out the hypocrisy from those up in arms when they believed the Biden administration was manipulating Twitter and the other social networks to silence certain speech (COVID information, Hunter Biden's laptop, etc) who now are completely silent with regard to Elon Musk and crew manipulating Xitter to push various other aims.
It's one of those things that is so overt, the strategy, in so far as there is one, is clearly just "move along, never mention it". And sadly, that generally works, especially in our age where news and information move so fast.