Google and Anthropic: Sharing a Sleeping Bag. Will They Get Married?
October 28, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
“Anthropic to Use 1 Million Google TPUs” contains a couple of interesting allegedly true factoids. The hook for the story is that Google has worked out a deal for Anthropic to use a few of Google’s smart processors. According to the Analytics India article:
The expansion is valued at ‘tens of billions of dollars,’ with an expected capacity of over a gigawatt coming online in 2026.
The numbers are the first thing that caught my attention. One million chips. Tens of billions. A gigawatt of power. I worked at Halliburton Nuclear years ago. If I remember what one of the Couchmans (either Don or Mel) told me. A gigawatt would could power about one million homes simultaneously. Think in terms of San Jose which has about a million residents I think.
Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
Second, I noted this statement:
The company [Anthropic] reported serving over 300,000 business customers, and the number of large accounts—those generating more than $100,000 in annual revenue—has increased nearly sevenfold in the past year.
The numbers are smaller. 300,000 business customers. What’s a business customer? Not defined. Dun & Bradstreet and other company tracking services split businesses up by revenue, their business sector, and other slices. Okay, 300,000. The estimable US Small Business Administration has kicked out a number of 36 million businesses in the US. (Is this number correct? What? You are doubting the US government data? Incredible.) The point is that Anthropic has 0.9375% of this SBA number of businesses. Now let’s assume that Anthropic gets four times its 300,000 business users in the next two years. That means Anthropic’s power demands for 1.2 million business users means that it will require the electrical generation capacity of Los Angeles. No big deal, right? The only hitch in the git along is that Anthropic-type growth could move more quickly than the folks who have to build, expand, or invent new energy sources. You see the problem. Big numbers don’t match the reality of power availability.
But Anthropic and Google are in one of those circular deals. Google invests in Anthropic; Anthropic buys a few processors. Analytics India says:
Google has been involved in various funding efforts for Anthropic, and a report from The New York Times earlier this year stated that it owns 14% of Anthropic, citing legal findings.
Several observations:
- This AI sector is into really big numbers. Most people cannot think about really big numbers. Most people think about a $300 property tax bill or paying for groceries at the price leader. (Did you think Whole Foods or Kroger?)
- The diffusion of AI to a tiny percentage of US businesses has a fairly hefty need for power, chips, and assorted infrastructure. That’s good for those in that business.
- The power generation shortfall is a bit of pothole, a deep pothole.
So what? Just Anthropic will require power equivalent to keeping the lights on in four LAs or one Istanbul.
Do you see a problem? I don’t because I believe that magical Google and Anthropic can solve any problem.
A rough calculation is that a human brain consumes 0.000002% of a gigawatt in 24 hours. That’s efficient. But I have confidence in Google and Anthropic. No problem is too big or complex for these bright, energetic professionals.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2025
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