Why are OpenAI and Anthropic cheering on regulation in Australia? The answer has global reach

OpenAI and Anthropic lost billions in predicted value after being shown up by a Chinese startup. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters View image in fullscreen OpenAI and Anthropic lost billions in predicted value after being shown up by a Chinese startup. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters Analysis Why are OpenAI and Anthropic cheering on regulation in Australia? The answer has global reach Luca Ittimani The companies hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Top US AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI cheered when Australia announced it would set new AI rules. Big tech celebrating limits on their Silicon Valley VC-funded free-for-all might seem counterintuitive but there’s a much broader play than just what happens in one relatively small market. Anthropic and OpenAI aren’t even on sharemarkets yet but this week lost billions in predicted value after being shown up by a Chinese startup. Moonshot AI on Friday launched a new model, Kimi K3, advertising it as the first open-source model of its size, allowing more user modification than Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Headaches for Silicon Valley as China chips away at the US’s lead in the AI race Read more Analysts are judging K3 is competitive with both the leading US models, which are also less freely customisable. Moonshot had to temporarily pause new subscriptions after demand for the new model strained capacity. Implied values for Anthropic’s sharemarket debut has slumped US$232bn to $1.56tn from Friday to Tuesday on IG’s trading platform. OpenAI dropped US$160bn to $1.16tn. The two companies are still privately owned and valued at less than US$1tn each, so IG’s numbers are market bets, not true values. But they hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June. Anthropic has already begun registering to list on US sharemarkets, which would allow it to raise billions from new investors. The better the story it can tell, the more money it can raise. Chinese competition does not make for a good story. Nor do surprise lawsuits from unhappy creatives, such as the one Anthropic had to settle for US$1.5bn on Monday (Tuesday AEST). The company will pay authors about US$3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement. One of the authors whose work Anthropic scraped was Andrew Charlton, Australia’s assistant technology minister. Charlton says the new regulation will mean Australian creatives can choose whether AI models are trained on their work and big tech companies will have to pay them. Yet those new rules could be a boon to big tech, Charlton says. “If we are upfront with what we expect in this Australian standard, we can give clarity to investors that in some ways enhances the attractiveness of Australia,” he told Sky News on Monday. Mali