The AI Players and Their Stage

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The spectacle unfolds, mesdames et messieurs, with a cast of characters most ambitious! For three years hence, OpenAI and Anthropic, once mere laboratories of fanciful speculation, have swelled into behemoths of infrastructure. Trillions of dollars, a sum fit to make Croesus himself blush, have been pledged to their future endeavors. It is a comedy of capital, most assuredly, though whether the laughter will be with or at these players remains to be seen.

Project Stargate, new pacts with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices – these are not simply business dealings, but declarations of intent. OpenAI and Anthropic aspire to be the very foundation upon which all things AI are built. A lofty ambition, wouldn’t you agree? One might even call it… presumptuous. But in this age of digital alchemy, presumption is often rewarded.

The discerning investor, however, understands that the fortunes of these two unicorns will not be confined to their own coffers. The semiconductor houses are but the first to benefit. If one seeks to partake in this burgeoning prosperity, one must turn their gaze to those venerable members of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ – those pillars of commerce who have long held sway.

Microsoft’s Gambit: A First Mover’s Advantage

A Cloud in the Making

Amazon, that purveyor of all things imaginable, plays a more subtle role in this drama. Yet, its contributions are no less significant. Large-scale infrastructure agreements abound, most notably a $38 billion GPU leasing deal with OpenAI. A tidy sum, wouldn’t you say? It underscores the growing demand for cloud computing resources, and Amazon’s willingness to capitalize on it.

Beyond OpenAI, Amazon’s relationship with Anthropic is particularly noteworthy. The company has committed $8 billion in investment capital, a substantial sum even by Amazon’s standards. It is a clear indication of its belief in Anthropic’s potential. One suspects a touch of rivalry with Microsoft at play.

Amazon benefits in two ways. First, Anthropic is a major user of GPU clusters operated by AWS. But more importantly, Anthropic is adopting Amazon’s in-house designed application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), Trainium and Inferentia. These custom chips promise to lower training and inference costs while improving performance. A most ingenious solution, wouldn’t you agree? It allows Amazon to exert greater control over its infrastructure and, of course, to extract a greater profit.

If Amazon can position its AI accelerators as viable alternatives to Nvidia and AMD’s GPUs, then AWS stands to gain significant pricing power. Customers will become increasingly locked into the platform, making it virtually unthinkable to switch to a competitor. Anthropic, therefore, has given AWS a subtle, yet significant, competitive advantage. A most cunning maneuver, wouldn’t you agree?

Google Cloud: A Latecomer’s Gambit

the growth of Google Cloud.

Throughout the AI revolution, Google Cloud has not only achieved impressive top-line growth but is now consistently generating operating income. A most welcome development, wouldn’t you agree? It demonstrates that Google is not simply reliant on its advertising revenue.

The irony, of course, is that two of Google Cloud’s marquee customers are OpenAI and Anthropic – the very companies that were supposedly in line to sap the life from Google Search. OpenAI is leveraging Google Cloud for added computing power, while Anthropic is complementing its existing chip stack with Alphabet’s custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). A most curious alliance, wouldn’t you agree? It suggests that even rivals can find common ground when faced with a common challenge.

Anthropic’s decision to train next-generation models on TPUs should strengthen Google Cloud’s competitive position. While AWS and Azure currently hold greater market share, Google Cloud is swiftly becoming a key AI infrastructure platform. As OpenAI continues to tackle its capacity bottlenecks, Google Cloud stands to benefit from accelerating user adoption. A most delightful turn of events, wouldn’t you agree?

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2026-02-01 05:23