Anthropic expanded its Claude Startups program because nothing says "we're confident in our product" like begging founders to please use our chatbot instead of the other chatbot. The AI company wants to deepen ties with fast-growing companies. Translated from corporate: they need revenue before the next funding round.
The program gives startups access to Claude. In exchange, startups give Anthropic the thing every AI company craves most: the ability to say other people use their product. It's a hostage situation where both sides think they're winning.
Fast-growing companies get discounted API credits. Anthropic gets to put logos on their website. Everyone pretends this matters. The startups will switch to whoever offers a better deal next quarter. Anthropic knows this. They're doing it anyway.
Founders love free sh*t. They love it even more when they can tell investors they're "partnering" with an AI company. Anthropic loves founders who haven't yet realized their SaaS product doesn't need a large language model. It needs customers. But sure, add a chatbot. That'll fix the burn rate.
This is the same playbook every enterprise software company has run since 2008. Give it away cheap to startups. Hope they grow. Hope they're too lazy to rip it out when they're big. Call it a "program" instead of what it actually is, which is discounted software.
Retail traders saw this headline and bought $MSFT because they can't read. Anthropic isn't publicly traded. It's backed by people who understand that when you're in a race to light money on fire, you need to light it faster than the other guy.
The expansion marks Anthropic's latest push to convince everyone they're different from OpenAI, using the exact same strategy as OpenAI.
Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash
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