Anthropic CEO Cautions on Risks of Poorly Timed AI Data Center Investments

The CEO of generative AI firm Anthropic warned that the purchase of escalating data center compute costs could be "ruinous" for the company if timed wrong.

"I really do believe that we could have models that are a country of geniuses in the data center in one to two years," he said.

"One question is: How many years after that do the trillions in revenue start rolling in? I don’t think it’s guaranteed that it’s going to be immediate. It could be one year, it could be two years, I could even stretch it to five years, although I’m sceptical of that."

"Basically, I’m saying, 'In 2027, how much compute do I get?' I could assume that the revenue will continue growing 10x a year, so it’ll be $100 billion at the end of 2026 and $1 trillion at the end of 2027. Actually, it would be $5 trillion dollars of compute because it would be $1 trillion a year for five years."