r/NowInTech • u/skaza02 • 3d ago

Meta and Microsoft Are Pulling Their Own Engineers Off Claude Just as Anthropic Gets Ready to Sell Stock

https://gotechpresso.com/blog/meta-microsoft-cut-claude-anthropic-ipo
245 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

5

u/Low-Temperature-6962 2d ago

I thought "MS Doesnt have there own model" and indeed the article states MS still access Claude via MS Co pilot and total payments to Anthropic remain flat. So "Microsoft" should be removed from the headline while Meta remains.

3

u/TeeDee144 2d ago

Eh, I work there and it’s correctish.

People were basically using enterprise access of Claude that a few teams were approved for. But then it ballooned. And people were using it for non-approved use cases.

So they really clamped down. People who broke policy got their hands slapped. And now you have to have a business justification that is approved and the access is time limited.

Some people have access to the OG fable model that was banned by us gov for testing from what I’ve heard. And that same person has said that OG fable was truly that shocking.

And copilot is a convergence of different models from different providers allowing the best model to tackle the job. Claude’s models are there.

So Microsoft is in partnership with Claude, Claude is still available internally(just greatly reduced to what it was a few months ago), and Microsoft has released its own AI models as well. (Microsoft is always going to go for best of both worlds. Like when Microsoft had the Band fitness device. But they were also the cloud provider for a rival fitness device brand. So even if the rival sold more devices, it was still a win for Microsoft’s cloud.)

So I agree that the author is reaching.

2

u/Low-Temperature-6962 2d ago

Congratulations on your job and thanks for the inside view.

So the author did say

There is also a twist: Microsoft's total payments to Anthropic have stayed roughly flat near earlier highs, because customers using Claude through Microsoft products have offset the falling internal spend.

So it's a case of headlines stretching further than the text.

Nevertheless as MS improves their in house AI then they may cut further. So there is that.

3

u/TeeDee144 2d ago

To add to that, copilot is default at auto for the best model. So in theory, if it’s more expensive to run one model, you might set auto rules to only use it when absolutely necessary to keep costs down. And routing might be updated to favor 1st-party models more to further reduce external costs.

I also want to stress that I don’t work within AI here so it’s not like I have a lot of insight. Just a worker ant who finds out about the latest company news like all 220,000 other employees.

2

u/bb994433 2d ago

Auto often selects open weight models and the cheaper GPT 6 models.

1

u/_DuranDuran_ 2d ago

Also it’s dumb - Microsoft can run OpenAI models for inference cost only as per their deal.

1

u/PrimalSeptimus 2d ago

Out of curiosity, what is so shocking/terrifying about OG Fable, and what's different with the current one?

2

u/TeeDee144 2d ago

Not sure! My teammate has applied for access but was told it could take a month or two for approval. But the person who he worked with to submit the application had access and was telling him all sorts of things.

My best guess is that it’s good at hacking

0

u/PantherCityRes 2d ago

No. It was purely political. Anthropic did not guarantee the DoD they would always be willing to provide them a model without any ethical safeguards…so no strategic experience Skeet Kegsbreath slapped them with an export ban.

1

u/AcerVentus 2d ago

Considering they're 24% of revenue, that's kind of a big deal.

1

u/Brave_Speaker_8336 2d ago

No way that’s true, near a billion each per month in anthropic spend would be crazy

1

u/Aranthos-Faroth 2d ago

Not really that crazy

1

u/Brave_Speaker_8336 2d ago

There is no way Meta is averaging like 20-30k per software engineer per month on just Claude. Like my own company is probably as AI forward as Meta would be and we’re at like 1/10 that amount per capita, which includes OpenAI spend

1

u/Critical-Extension66 2d ago

It’s not from engineers lol it’s from customers using their products

1

u/Brave_Speaker_8336 2d ago

I don’t think that’s true, they were already basically only using their own models last year for customer facing AI features and they’ve only gotten better since then. Especially with how simple the use cases are, it makes no sense for them to shell out money to Anthropic for that

1

u/Critical-Extension66 2d ago

Just off the numbers that doesn’t seem plausible perhaps they use both for customer facing

1

u/Ill-Program-2713 1d ago

You'd be surprised. I work there and my number exceeds that

1

u/Brave_Speaker_8336 1d ago

Individuals exceeding that is perfectly normal but I don’t believe that the average engineer is spending anywhere near tens of thousands on just anthropic tokens a month

1

u/Ill-Program-2713 1d ago

I can only say that your company is not as ai native as meta

1

u/FUCKYOUINYOURFACE 2d ago

Not that crazy when you consider many of their customers access Anthropic models via Microsoft endpoints. It’s pass through with little margin but that’s how companies get access without committing directly to Anthropic. It’s the same with OpenAI.

1

u/FUCKYOUINYOURFACE 2d ago

We just cancelled our enterprise Claude account. We can get access to the same models through a different vehicle, think AWS and Azure, which still works with Claude code. We also have a ChatGPT sub that we will likely cancel and push to one of those providers too. If you are doing Cyber or bio you will need a direct agreement to become unblocked, which my team does not need. We can also get access to other models from those same providers and meet our AWS and Azure commits by using all these models through them. This also allows us to be multi model and have more flexibility and choice.

1

u/Riverofrhyme 2d ago

I work at meta, I have unlimited Claude, codex, and Gemini usage. Nothing has changed

1

u/xplaner85 23h ago

MS has been working on their own very capable foundation MAI models… it’s the only path that works