#50 - AI Shows Its Bills: Germany Says Yes to Nvidia, Anthropic Is "Not Enough" and 1,000 Bug-Fixers

AI puts its bills on the table: Anthropic makes $16.8 billion in three months – and investors say "not enough". A bank brings in 1,000 people because AI found too many holes. And Germany says yes to Nvidia.

Today is one question: what happens when the AI boom has to show its bills – and who pays in the end?

In this episode:

🌑 Wildberger and Nvidia (01:46) — Germany's digital minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) told Tagesspiegel the "extremely high" revenue from AI must be taxed; hours later he told RTL/ntv he wants growth through AI and isn't talking about new taxes (dpa-AFX). Two days later Handelsblatt reported, confirmed by Deutschlandfunk, that the government plans an AI partnership with Nvidia: a three-digit-million-euro investment, Nvidia engineers and chips, about a dozen companies including Siemens, Audi and Black Forest Labs, aimed at physical AI for robots and self-driving cars. Wildberger calls the potential "gewaltig" – huge. The official announcement is planned for Monday in Berlin; until then it is a press report.

🌑 Anthropic: a record, but "not enough" (05:22) — Reuters reports Anthropic told investors it made $16.8 billion in revenue last quarter, up from $11.6 billion – about 45 percent, after nearly 150 percent the quarter before. For its planned November IPO, some investors now talk about a $1.5 trillion valuation instead of $2 trillion – investor talk, not a set price. Reuters also reports at least $518 billion in compute commitments over ten years, about 80 percent non-cancellable (on air: "highly indebted" – these are commitments, not debt).

🌑 Bank of America's 1,000 bug-fixers (09:04) — CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC the bank brought in about 1,000 contractors between April and June to fix flaws found by powerful AI models such as Anthropic's Mythos, alongside 3,000 of its own staff. The fixes plus anti-money-laundering work cost "a couple hundred million dollars plus" last quarter, combined (in the cold open: "thousands" – it's about 1,000).

🌑 The Fed and jobs (12:05) — In the Fed's 14 October Beige Book, five of twelve districts report firms not replacing people who leave or delaying hiring after investing in AI. In Dallas, AI agents ran more than 180 hours of job interviews in two days – and the firm then hired new recruiters to review them. Business anecdotes, not statistics.

🌑 Five times no to Palantir (15:03) — Swiss magazine Republik reports the Swiss army and procurement agency armasuisse looked at Palantir products five times since 2020 – five times no purchase. In three cases data control was a reason; in 2022 even the test failed because the solution couldn't run on Swiss infrastructure. Palantir disputes a formal, in-depth evaluation.

🧵 The thread (16:54) — record revenue, but not enough; 1,000 new jobs, but only to clean up; Berlin says yes to Nvidia, Bern says no to Palantir. The bills are real – and they prove this stuff is actually being used.

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AI Neanderthal — AI news for humans, not robots. Stay curious.