Anthropic is among the key AI players that could potentially go public in 2026.

Now the company is looking to outmaneuver its big spending rivals by showing you don't need the most chips to win.

Mackenzie Sagalos has more on their strategy in today's tech check, which is here in person at Post 9.

What a treat, McKenzie. Good to see you.

Hey, good to see you, Sarah.

So Anthropic is making a bet that goes against everything Silicon Valley believes right now.

While Open AI is committing to $1.4 trillion in headline deals and building massive data centers

across West Texas, Anthropics president Daniela Amade told me in an exclusive

interview that her company is winning by spending less, not more.

Anthropic has always had a fraction of what our competitors have had in terms of compute

and capital.

We've pretty consistently had the sort of most powerful, most performant models for the

majority of the past several years. And I think that is due to just the quality of our team and

also just our orientation, right? Our desire to do more with less, I think is something that has

always been a core value of Anthropics. That would be clear, Anthropic isn't spending nothing. They've got roughly $100 billion in compute commitments, but that's a fraction of what OpenAI is putting on the table.

The thesis is that better algorithms and better talent can beat brute force scale.

Her brother and co-founder Dario Amade, the CEO, is sounding the alarm on competitors who are over-leveraging. He told our Andrew Ross Sorkin that there is a cone of uncertainty in this market.

Data centers take two years to build.

Chip orders are placed years in advance, and he says that some players are not managing that risk well.

Daniela Amadei told me that they are looking to be responsible stewards of capital,

even as demand continues

to defy their expectations.

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