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How do you even do that, are we supposed to believe that some company with $500 million to spend didn't know how to use cost tracking? Cost tracking comes with the pleb-tier management tools I get!
And if they were trying to goose the valuation then why would they admit it was unintentional, it makes Anthropic sound expensive? (They are expensive). It sounds more like an anti-Anthropic story to me.
The story sounds greatly exaggerated or misleading IMO. Who is this mystery company too, what are the details on this? More likely some company just consciously spent a lot of money on Claude AI and then some reporter fluffed it up into a narrative we all hear instead of a boring article that goes nowhere.
Regarding energy, even though the US is a major producer and isn't as badly affected as other countries like Australia, Europe or poor countries, the world economy is global. Problems in Asia will spread to America. The US is busily exporting oil, including the strategic reserve releases, to take advantage of price gaps and stabilize markets. But this is a temporary fix. The price gaps will narrow. The invisible hand of the market will slowly but surely squeeze the US economy if this price pressure remains. Even if oil producers profit, much more of the US economy relies on truck transport, plastics, feedstock, jet fuel, lubricants and all the other chemicals which support industrial civilization.
Venezuelan oil is low quality and requires years of patient investment and capable administration to realize much net gains from. Crude oil production there is barely half of what it was in 2016 and shows no signs of making up for the current supply loss. Nobody is a bigger fan of nuclear than me but nuclear energy is not going to lower fuel prices in a matter of months.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/crude-oil-production
I've not seen a single proper source for that 500m claim either, but everyone seems to just accept it at face value.
The one time I saw something like an original image for the claim, it was from an Indian subreddit (or twitter, I can't remember exactly) and had no currency attached. So if it were 500m rupees, that would only be 5m USD. That would make a lot more sense to me
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