Jaeden Shafer

Ed Zoni said that he got a positive return on his investment, but he also did kind of a statement over to GeekWire where he said he was disappointed that the company, with as much momentum as they had, was basically winding down so quickly.

Like, did they really give it a full shot after less than a year and the amount of money they'd raised?

So I think if you compare that to Asani and what she was saying on LinkedIn, she kind of described this as a really kind of straightforward.

Joining forces with Anthropic was kind of the best bet that they had to be successful.

And I mean, this is kind of how every company that gets acquired, they're always like, look, we know you guys loved us, but like we're better together with Anthropic.

But I think for the customers anyways, they always get, it's like, it's pretty annoying to trust a startup that gets acquired by Anthropic and then the startup's like, and we're winding down.

So any of the tools and features you like are gone, but you go find something new.

Anyways, it leaves bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, but obviously they're making a lot of money.

That's the direction they want to take.

Now, what I will say is this acquisition is now coming at a really tense moment for Anthropic.

This isn't the only kind of drama going on at the company.

According to Axios, they just put out a report, Anthropic has a ton of pressure that's increasing from the Pentagon over access to its AI models.

So the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, he apparently told the CEO, Dario Amadeo, that Anthropic had to provide the US military with unrestricted access to its models, or they're going to risk being labeled as a supply chain risk.

This is basically a designation that the US Department of Defense or the US military is typically giving to foreign adversaries.

Alternatively, they could invoke the Defense Protection Act, which is basically force, anthropic, to tailor their systems for military use.

If you want to know kind of the context or background on the Defense Protection Act, it basically gives the president the authority to require companies to prioritize or basically to expand their product for national defense.

And the last time this was used was during COVID-19.

They actually used it to force General Motors and 3M to make ventilators and masks.

And so, you know, this is something that's been used in the past.

Does it warrant it today is the real question.