Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

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Well there's a good reason that OpenAI partnered up with Microsoft. The calculation is that the established big techs - Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta are all going to be significantly impacted by AI so it's not unreasonable to look at Anthropic at 10% of their market cap as a reasonable value. Would it be worth Apple to bring Anthropic in house? They failed to deliver AI themselves, they know the risks of being dependent on Google. If AI goes far enough it may totally remove Apple's differentiation.

Some of the Big Techs are building their own in house stuff (Meta, Google), but it wouldn't be crazy to see acquisitions by the others, especially if the market cools slightly. And then there's the possibility that these companies mature their revenue streams enough to start actually really throwing off money and paying off the investment.

> they know the risks of being dependent on Google

I wouldn't argue it's that risky. Look at their past entanglements:

1. Google Default Search Bribe - brings in $20B a year for literally doing nothing

2. Google Maps: Google let them build their own custom app using Google's backend, and it worked fine all the way up until Apple chose to exit that arrangement

actually I can't think of any others, but is there an example of Apple getting burned by Google?

Android.

Well they have an illegal monopoly over display ads that they defended with a moat of money when FB tried to butt in, so that's an example of them being not great to rely on.

Yes, but look at the counter side of it, Apple were hitched to Intel's wagon for CPUs and their laptop line got slowly demolished until Apple had to take over the task themselves (admittedly with expertise they'd largely already developed with the iPhone, which similarly came in house from places like Imagination Tech).

Tim Apple is famous for very few things but

> We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make

If AI is as big as we think it will be, Apple thinks they need to own it.

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