With AI, vendor loyalty is (almost) dead: at least a dozen OpenAI VCs have now returned to Anthropic.

It’s OpenAI on about to complete a new round of $100 billionand Anthropic is just shutting down his own monster $ 30 billion to raiseone thing is clear: the concept of investor “loyalty” is hanging by a thread.

At least a dozen direct suppliers to OpenAI were he announced as backers of Anthropic’s $30 billion raise earlier this month, including Founders Fund, Iconiq, Insight Partners, and Sequoia Capital.

Some dual investments sound like they come from the hedge fund or asset manager worlds, where their goal is to invest heavily in public stocks (competitors or otherwise). These include D1, Fidelity, and TPG.

One of these was a little confusing. BlackRock’s mutual fund joined Anthropic’s $30 billion even though BlackRock’s chief executive is a board member. Adebayo Ogunlesi he is also on the board of directors of OpenAI.

In the same world, it is true that if the various funds of BlackRock find an opportunity to own OpenAI stock, they can take it, without worrying about the cooperation of a member of their senior management. (BlackRock manages all kinds of mutual funds, including mutual funds, closed-ends, and ETFs). And we all know it history of OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft and why Microsoft is hedging its bets. Now for Nvidia.

But venture capital – until now – works differently.

VCs market themselves as “startup friendly” and “helpful,” the idea being that when a VC firm buys a small stake in a startup company, the lender helps the startup succeed, especially against its competitors. If you own both OpenAI and Anthropic, who are your loyalties, other than your vendors?

In addition, the founders are private companies. They often share secrets with their direct business partners – which are not as publicly disclosed as with public companies. Often, VCs also have chairs, which have some fiduciary role in their companies.

What makes this story even more interesting is that Sam Altman comes from the world of finance, as the former president of Y Combinator. He knows how to drill. In 2024, he is said to have given his money list of OpenAI fighters that he did not want him to return. It also included companies founded by people who left OpenAI, including Anthropic, xAI, and Safe Superintelligence.

Altman later denied that he had told investors in OpenAI that they would be banned in the future if they joined the list of suspects. Altman admitted that if he “makes useless money,” he will no longer receive OpenAI’s business secrets, according to documents in the case between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Business Insider reported.

AI is also breaking the mold due to the aggressive investment that major AI labs are raising as they face unprecedented growth (and unprecedented data center requirements). At some point, when the hat is passed, the needs are so great and the opportunity to return is so great, who would expect otherwise?

It seems that not all traders have gone down the slippery slope. Andreessen Horowitz supports OpenAI but not (yet) Anthropic. Menlo Ventures backs Anthropic but not (yet) OpenAI, for example.

In fact, in our limited research, we found a dozen investors who appear to have real investments in one of these companies, not all.

Others include Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and Greenoaks. (Note: we originally asked Claude to provide us with a list of double investors. It resulted in as many mistakes as it did right, so it’s all because of the advanced technology whose work is sometimes more reliable than that of a student.)

However, as we said earlier, the fact that the current law has been rejected by the most respected companies in the Valley, like Sequoia, it is popular. One investor we approached, just scoffed and said that as long as the company doesn’t have a seat, no one sees the downside.

However, the anti-interest clause should be another thing that founders ask before signing the paper, regardless of who they are from.