Anthropic's $10B Compute Deal with New Startup Volta

Anthropic has signed a $10 billion, six-year deal for computing power with Volta, a cloud startup that just launched. This agreement marks Volta's first major contract. Here's the thing: Anthropic, an AI developer, seems to have an insatiable demand for computing power. This new deal adds to an already long list of suppliers. Anthropic's biggest backer, Amazon, provides much of its compute, and it has significant deals with Google and Broadcom. AMD is also investing $5 billion, and companies like CoreWeave, Akamai, and SpaceX provide compute as well. What makes the Volta deal stand out is how new the company is. Anthropic is committing to a startup that was only just out of stealth and is valued at $2.4 billion. Volta aims to make Nvidia's chips more accessible, and will run Anthropic's capacity partly through the bitcoin miner Bitdeer in Norway. For Anthropic, spreading its compute across many suppliers is a form of insurance, and it also provides leverage. This strategy helps ensure its operations aren't overly reliant on any single provider. This ongoing demand for compute highlights the massive scale of investment in the AI industry.