Anthropic and OpenAI lobby for regulation to stifle rivals
- Anthropic uses lobbying for strict AI safety rules to block smaller competitors.
- OpenAI and Anthropic are consolidating power via enterprise and consumer markets.
- The race is shifting from model development to regulatory capture and profitable APIs.
Anthropic’s rise isn’t just about better models - it’s about using Washington to build a wall. On All-In, David Sacks accused the AI lab of lobbying for a government permissioning regime that would require approvals for new models or chip sales. This creates a regulatory moat that startups can’t cross, securing market dominance for incumbents.
Anthropic’s technical strategy is the perfect cover. It doubled down on coding as a path to recursive self-improvement, a bet that has captured enterprise IT budgets and reportedly added $6 billion to its annual run rate. Its new Claude Mythos model represents a “step change” in reasoning and cyber capabilities, as confirmed on The AI Daily Brief.
David Sacks, All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg:
- Anthropic is sort of the most AGI-pilled of all the frontier labs.
- They made this bet on coding as their way to get to recursive self-improvement.
OpenAI is pursuing a parallel form of capture, but through the market. It shelved experimental features like an ‘adult mode’ to focus on enterprise sales and coding tools, consolidating around profitable revenue streams. As The AI Daily Brief reported, both companies are now in a liquidity race, with rumors of Anthropic targeting an IPO as early as October.
The competition is bifurcating. Chamath Palihapitiya noted on All-In that OpenAI’s revenue is three-quarters consumer subscriptions, while Anthropic’s is almost the exact opposite - heavily weighted toward the developer API market. They own different territories: one has the user, the other owns the workflow.
This corporate maneuvering coincides with a fundamental shift in the AI infrastructure layer. CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator, also on All-In, said demand is decisively moving from training to inference, which he called the “monetization of the investment.” He dismissed fears of rapid GPU obsolescence as “nonsense,” noting clients sign five-year contracts. The compute is becoming a stable, long-term utility, and the companies that control its rules and its pipes are locking in their advantage.
The frontier AI race is over. The moat-building phase has begun.
Source Intelligence
- Deep dive into what was said in the episodes
Anthropic's Generational Run, OpenAI Panics, AI Moats, Meta Loses Lawsuits • Mar 27
- Anthropic prioritizes coding as its core competency to dominate enterprise AI budgets.
- David Sacks argues Anthropic made a calculated bet on coding for recursive self-improvement in AI models.
- Sacks claims an AI model that can write its own code could theoretically build its own future.
- Anthropic reportedly added $6 billion to its annual run rate in February alone.
- Anthropic's "Computer Use" feature enables its LLM to navigate desktops like a human agent.
- David Sacks accuses Anthropic of lobbying Washington for AI regulations to create a permissioning regime.
- Sacks claims such a regime would require AI labs to seek government approval before releasing models or selling chips.
- Sacks argues these proposed regulations would create moats that new AI startups cannot cross.
- David Friedberg suggests Anthropic’s perceived political leanings attract left-leaning AI PhDs as a branding exercise.
- Chamath Palihapitiya states OpenAI's revenue is three-quarters consumer subscriptions and one-quarter API.
- Palihapitiya notes Anthropic's revenue model is almost the opposite, focusing on developers and enterprise APIs.
- OpenAI and Anthropic have distinct business models despite headlines of a head-to-head collapse.
- OpenAI dominates the consumer user market, while Anthropic leads the developer workflow and enterprise API market.
Four CEOs on the Future of AI: CoreWeave, Perplexity, Mistral, and IREN • Mar 23
- CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator told the All-In podcast that AI compute demand is shifting decisively from model training to inference, which he calls the 'monetization of the investment' where commercial value is realized.
- Intrator built CoreWeave by first renting GPU cycles for crypto mining and rendering, treating compute as a flexible asset, before pivoting the infrastructure to AI.
- To learn AI infrastructure, CoreWeave purchased Nvidia A100 GPUs and donated them to an open-source research project, which Intrator called paying 'tuition'; when the researchers returned to enterprise jobs, they demanded the same setup, becoming CoreWeave's first customers.
- CoreWeave's strategy is to operate in a layer 'above the Nvidia GPUs but below the models,' delivering specialized AI compute, while hyperscalers like AWS handle general-purpose workloads.
- Intrator claims CoreWeave's lead comes from being first to deploy each new Nvidia architecture at commercial scale, from H100s to the forthcoming GB300s.
- The CoreWeave CEO framed the hardware lifecycle as bleeding-edge chips training new models, which then cycle down into long-term inference use, a trend he says is validated by customer contracts and pricing.
Also from this episode: (2)
Chips (2)
- Michael Intrator dismissed arguments about rapid GPU obsolescence as 'nonsense' driven by short-sellers, noting CoreWeave's average customer contract is five years and the firm uses a six-year depreciation schedule for its hardware.
- Intrator cited appreciating prices for Nvidia's A100 chips as proof of enduring demand, arguing new market entrants blocked from buying the latest models create a secondary market for older hardware.
Nathaniel Whittemore
Anthropic Accidentally Revealed Their Most Powerful Model Ever • Mar 27
- Anthropic confirmed its Claude Mythos model is a step change in reasoning and coding performance over its current Opus tier.
- Claude Mythos is currently limited to security researchers so Anthropic can map out its advanced cybersecurity risks before wider release.
- Google's Gemini 3.1 Flash Live model enables continuous, real-time voice conversations, likely for a new version of Siri.
- Google's new voice AI, deployed at Home Depot, handles complex product data like SKU codes far better than prior models.
- Shopify's Tinker app offers 100 free AI tools, aiming to lower adoption friction for small business owners.
- Nathaniel Whittemore argues tools like Tinker help public AI acceptance by framing it as an income booster, not just a job threat.
- OpenAI shelved its adult mode project after its age verification system showed a 12% failure rate.
- OpenAI advisors also warned of emotional dependency risks, leading the company to consolidate around coding and enterprise sales.
- Nathaniel Whittemore says this IPO race will force both Anthropic and OpenAI to prioritize profitable enterprise tools over experimental features.
Also from this episode: (1)
Startups (1)
- Anthropic is reportedly eyeing an IPO as early as October, accelerating a race for public market liquidity with OpenAI.