❯ Anthropic’s CEO asked Meta for compute and was turned down, as the shortage pushes rivals to ask each other for help

A call in search of computeAnthropic CEO Dario Amodei contacted Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang earlier this year hoping to secure more compute, and Meta did not agree, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report’s standfirst, as listed on Techmeme, says bitter rivals are forming alliances and executives are having to step in personally to secure resources.

A $10 billion lease discussed in JulyAI News Weekly noted that CNBC reported in July that Anthropic had proposed leasing compute from Meta, with preliminary talks covering about $10 billion over two years. The Journal did not say whether Amodei’s outreach was part of the same talks, how much compute he sought or why Meta declined.

What is scarce is chips usable todayTraining new models and serving user requests both consume chips, and how much compute a model company can get directly determines how many users it can serve. For Meta, handing compute to a directly competing model company amounts to speeding up a rival, which makes the deal hard to settle on price alone. Another Journal report listed on the same Techmeme page said Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown brokered a compute deal with SpaceX worth $1.25 billion a month.

▮ SIGNALAfter a model company raises the money, someone still has to be willing to give up ready compute, and those who have it are often its competitors.