We’re feeling cynical about xAI’s big deal with Anthropic

我们对 xAI 与 Anthropic 的大额交易持怀疑态度

Anthropic and xAI announced a big partnership this week, with Anthropic buying all the compute capacity at xAI’s Colossus 1 data center in Tennessee. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what the deal might mean for xAI’s parent company SpaceX, as SpaceX prepares to go public and apparently plans to dissolve xAI as a separate organization.

本周，Anthropic 和 xAI 宣布达成一项重大合作伙伴关系，Anthropic 将买下 xAI 位于田纳西州 Colossus 1 数据中心的所有计算能力。在 TechCrunch 的《Equity》播客最新一期节目中，Kirsten Korosec、Sean O’Kane 和我讨论了这笔交易对 xAI 母公司 SpaceX 可能意味着什么，因为 SpaceX 正准备上市，且据称计划将 xAI 作为一个独立组织解散。

Kirsten did her best to offer “a positive view” on the partnership — after all, it’s a new way for xAI to make money. But she also noted that this also suggests xAI isn’t doing much when it comes to training its own frontier AI models, and it’s harder for the company to position itself as a “forward-looking, innovative” business when that’s the case.

Kirsten 尽力对这一合作给出了“积极的看法”——毕竟，这是 xAI 赚钱的一种新途径。但她也指出，这也表明 xAI 在训练其自身前沿 AI 模型方面并没有太多作为，在这种情况下，公司很难将自己定位为一家“具有前瞻性的创新”企业。

Then Sean asked: “Why be positive when you can be cynical?” In his view, this seems like “a major heat check before the IPO.” Yes, becoming a neocloud might be “a more believable business in the near term,” but it’s less likely to get outside investors excited in the long term. (And then there’s the environmental lawsuit that xAI is facing over Colossus 1.)

随后 Sean 问道：“既然可以持怀疑态度，为什么要保持乐观呢？”在他看来，这似乎是“IPO 前的一次重大压力测试”。没错，成为一家“新云”（neocloud）服务商在短期内可能是一项“更可信的业务”，但从长远来看，它不太可能让外部投资者感到兴奋。（此外，xAI 还因 Colossus 1 面临着环境诉讼。）

Sean O’Kane: I always love a surprise, especially when everybody’s eyes [are] on another ball, a major trial that’s happening. Seemingly out of nowhere this week, SpaceX and therefore its AI subsidiary xAI — which apparently no longer exists now, or is imminently not about to exist, which we can get to — struck a deal with Anthropic.

Sean O’Kane：我总是喜欢惊喜，尤其是当大家的目光都集中在另一件事——即正在进行的一场重大审判——上时。本周，SpaceX 及其 AI 子公司 xAI（显然现在已经不存在了，或者即将不复存在，我们稍后会谈到这一点）似乎毫无征兆地与 Anthropic 达成了一项协议。

Basically, the real version of the deal is that Anthropic’s essentially taking over all of the compute at the data center known as Colossus 1 in Memphis, Tennessee, to focus on Anthropic’s more enterprise-focused AI products. There’s been a lot of reporting about how [Anthropic’s] been looking for more compute […] and it seems like an escape valve for them to be able to strike this deal and get access to all this compute.

简单来说，这笔交易的实质是 Anthropic 接管了位于田纳西州孟菲斯市 Colossus 1 数据中心的所有计算资源，以专注于 Anthropic 更偏向企业级的 AI 产品。此前有很多报道称 [Anthropic] 一直在寻找更多的计算资源……而达成这笔交易并获得所有这些计算能力，对他们来说似乎是一个出口。

In the near term, for xAI and for SpaceX, yes, they are a neocloud now, in the sense that they had to do something with all this compute that they were building, because it certainly seems like they were not going to need it for Grok — which, outside of X, is not burning up the world as far as becoming the new hot consumer chat bot.

短期来看，对于 xAI 和 SpaceX 而言，是的，他们现在成了“新云”服务商，因为他们必须处理掉所有这些正在建设的计算资源，毕竟看起来他们并不需要用这些资源来支持 Grok——除了在 X 平台上，Grok 在成为热门消费级聊天机器人方面并没有引起全球轰动。

Kirsten Korosec: And we should say that in terms of what a neocloud is, for those who don’t know, this is the idea of buying GPUs from Nvidia and the like, and renting those out as opposed to using those for their own AI, training their own AI models. So this is a different kind of business, and the point that our AI editor, Russell Brandom, makes is that a lot of companies are building out data centers, but if given a choice between, do they rent them out [or using them to train their own models], they are still prioritizing using this compute for their own internal AI model training. I think that’s an important point and one that suggests that maybe xAI isn’t doing so much on the AI model training [side].

Kirsten Korosec：我们应该解释一下什么是“新云”，对于那些不知道的人来说，这指的是从英伟达等公司购买 GPU 并将其出租，而不是将其用于自己的 AI 开发或训练自己的 AI 模型。所以这是一种不同的业务模式。我们的 AI 编辑 Russell Brandom 指出，许多公司都在建设数据中心，但如果要在“出租”和“用于训练自己的模型”之间做出选择，他们仍然会优先将这些计算资源用于内部的 AI 模型训练。我认为这是一个重要的观点，也暗示了 xAI 在 AI 模型训练方面可能并没有投入太多。

Anthony Ha: Right, and as Sean was alluding to, most people would not necessarily think of Grok as — not only that it’s known for some pretty unpleasant, if not downright illegal, content, but also it’s not necessarily super cutting edge. Especially if we start talking about enterprise AI, which I know we’re gonna be getting into later in this episode, you don’t hear a lot about people using Grok for work-critical tasks. And so the question becomes: How can xAI actually make money? And apparently just selling the infrastructure could be one of the main ways to do it.

Anthony Ha：没错，正如 Sean 所提到的，大多数人未必会认为 Grok 是——它不仅以一些令人不快甚至完全违规的内容而闻名，而且它也不一定处于最前沿。特别是当我们谈论企业级 AI 时（我知道我们稍后会在节目中深入探讨），你很少听说有人使用 Grok 来处理关键工作任务。所以问题变成了：xAI 到底该如何赚钱？显然，直接出售基础设施可能就是主要途径之一。

Kirsten: And you could take a positive view on that, right? They figured out a way to make money. But I think that when you are positioning your company — in this case, SpaceX-slash-xAI — as a forward-looking, innovative company, that’s tougher to sell if you are simply just renting out your GPUs and not using them for that innovation.

Kirsten：你可以对此持积极态度，对吧？他们找到了赚钱的方法。但我认为，当你将公司（在本例中是 SpaceX/xAI）定位为一家具有前瞻性的创新公司时，如果你只是出租 GPU 而不是将其用于创新，那么这种定位就很难让人信服。

Sean: But why be positive when you can be cynical? Which is to say that this seems like a major heat check before the IPO that we’re about to see get rammed into the markets with SpaceX. Anthony, you mentioned not only is Grok not being used for big enterprise tasks, there’s been reporting that xAI employees were using other models, they weren’t even using [Grok] internally, and that caused this big shakeup inside of xAI, post acquisition from SpaceX, that involved essentially all the co-founders leaving other than Elon Musk, [and] him basically saying he’s starting from scratch on xAI, despite the fact that SpaceX paid $250 billion for it in the run up to this mega-IPO. And now he’s saying that they’re going to dissolve xAI as a separate entity inside SpaceX altogether. He’s starting to call the whole thing SpaceXAI, because this man loves nothing but to ruin a brand that has some value to it — see Twitter. This may be a more believable business in the near term, and so on some level, I could see this being maybe more attractive to investors come IPO time, because it’s like a bit more reliable and certainly more real than them being a frontier lab developer. But it’s also not the kind of business that’s going…

Sean：但既然可以持怀疑态度，为什么要保持乐观呢？也就是说，这看起来像是 SpaceX 在 IPO 前的一次重大压力测试，我们即将看到它被推向市场。Anthony，你提到 Grok 不仅没有被用于大型企业任务，还有报道称 xAI 的员工甚至在内部使用其他模型，根本没用 [Grok]。这导致了 xAI 在被 SpaceX 收购后发生了一场大洗牌，除了 Elon Musk 之外，几乎所有的联合创始人都离开了，而他基本上表示要从零开始重建 xAI，尽管 SpaceX 在这次超级 IPO 前夕为它支付了 2500 亿美元。现在他说要将 xAI 作为 SpaceX 内部的一个独立实体彻底解散。他开始把整个项目称为 SpaceXAI，因为这个人最喜欢做的事就是毁掉一个有价值的品牌——看看 Twitter 就知道了。这在短期内可能是一项更可信的业务，所以在某种程度上，我能看出这在 IPO 时可能对投资者更具吸引力，因为它比作为一家前沿实验室开发商更可靠、更真实。但这也并不是那种能够……的业务。