alt Hacker NewsI’m surprised Anthropic wanted to partner with Broadcom when they have such a negative reputation with antics such as their VMWare acquisition.
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Broadcom builds the TPU chip. Google designs it. You can’t avoid partnering with Broadcom if you want TPUs in significant volume .
The VMware s/w rental market has no relevance to this deal, any more than the IBM role in data processing in germany in the 1930s had any relevance to their business in Israel in the 60s, or Oracle's failure in the DC market impacts licencing of the database product.
It's just not material. Broadcom make devices they need, and Broadcom want to sell those devices and exclude another VLSI company from selling, so the two have an interest in doing business. That's all there is to it.
About the most you could say is that the lawyers drafting whatever agreement they sign to, will reflect on the contract in regard to future changes of pricing and supply, in the light of what Broadcom did with VMWare licencing costs.
Broadcom makes the TPU. If you want TPUs, you are working with Broadcom whether you want to or not.
I think it’s also important to add the context that Broadcom’s CEO, Hock Tan, went on CNBC in October and had a vacuous conversation with Jim Cramer about their OpenAI “deal” at the time [0]. Nothing of substance was said, it was just endless loops about the opportunity of AI. It is now 6 months later and there has been nary a peep from Broadcom about any updates.
I think Anthropic is a more grounded company than OpenAI because Sam Altman is insane, but it is still playing the same game.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU2HhJ3jCts