Google buying compute to starve competitors
The real play isn't just that Google is hoarding AI compute capacity. It's that they're using their cash advantage to lock competitors out of the market entirely. If Anthropic and everyone else can't buy chips, they can't scale. That's worth billions before you even run a single model.
This is just vertical monopoly with a tech coat of paint.
I just realised that Google might actually be buying this compute in part to stop anyone else from buying that capacity. Blocking other companies from buying compute could alone be worth billions of dollars (making sure competitors like Anthropic are capacity constrained).
Source
x.com