Three stories about Meta made headlines this week. First, a graphic from The Information noting that Meta employees used 60.2 trillion tokens in 30 days. Second, a story around Meta’s internal “Claudenomics” leaderboard ended as quickly as it began, with the company shutting down the leaderboard after reports of intentionally inefficient usage. Third, Meta announced Meta Spark, the company’s first proprietary model developed under Alexandr Wang’s Meta Superintelligence Lab.
On the surface, it isn’t likely that Meta’s use of Anthropic tools was a huge deal. It has been pointed out that many of the 60.2 trillion tokens consumed were likely input tokens contextualizing coding tasks. This means that, while significant, extrapolating the token count to conclude that Meta accounts for one-third of Anthropic’s revenue is incorrect. While the company hasn’t made public comment about shutting down Claudenomics, a reasonable read could be that (1) a system that incentivizes inefficient token usage is a bad system (2) Meta wants their employees to use the new model, even though it’s worse than other SOTA models on coding, (3) Meta doesn’t want the launch of the new model to be overshadowed.
It’s possible, however, that these stories are connected. Followers of Meta’s AI progress have hypothesized that the company intentionally encouraged the usage of Anthropic’s models to collect data used to distill reasoning traces from Claude models. This isn’t a crazy idea; Bloomberg reported that Muse Spark was training using “third-party open-source models, including Qwen from the Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., as well as ones from OpenAI and Google.” A Meta spokesperson said, “Like others across the industry, Meta uses techniques like distillation with strict safeguards in place to learn from openly available AI models and improve our own.”
Important Disclosures
This material has been distributed solely for informational and educational purposes only and is not a solicitation or an offer to buy any security or to participate in any trading strategy. All material presented is compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy, adequacy, or completeness cannot be guaranteed, and Contrary LLC (Contrary LLC, together with its affiliates, “Contrary”) makes no representation as to its accuracy, adequacy, or completeness.
The information herein is based on Contrary beliefs, as well as certain assumptions regarding future events based on information available to Contrary on a formal and informal basis as of the date of this publication. The material may include projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events, targets or expectations. Past performance of a company is no guarantee of future results. There is no guarantee that any opinions, forecasts, projections, risk assumptions, or commentary discussed herein will be realized. Actual experience may not reflect all of these opinions, forecasts, projections, risk assumptions, or commentary.
Contrary shall have no responsibility for: (i) determining that any opinions, forecasts, projections, risk assumptions, or commentary discussed herein is suitable for any particular reader; (ii) monitoring whether any opinions, forecasts, projections, risk assumptions, or commentary discussed herein continues to be suitable for any reader; or (iii) tailoring any opinions, forecasts, projections, risk assumptions, or commentary discussed herein to any particular reader’s objectives, guidelines, or restrictions. Receipt of this material does not, by itself, imply that Contrary has an advisory agreement, oral or otherwise, with any reader.
Contrary is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The registration of Contrary in no way implies a certain level of skill or expertise or that the SEC has endorsed Contrary. Investment decisions for Contrary clients are made by Contrary. Please note that, although Contrary manages assets on behalf of Contrary clients, Contrary clients may take any position (whether positive or negative) with respect to the company described in this material. The information provided in this material does not represent any investment strategy that Contrary manages on behalf of, or recommends to, its clients.
Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, company or product made reference to directly or indirectly in this material, will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated performance level(s), or be suitable for your portfolio. Due to rapidly changing market conditions and the complexity of investment decisions, supplemental information and other sources may be required to make informed investment decisions based on your individual investment objectives and suitability specifications. All expressions of opinions are subject to change without notice. Investors should seek financial advice regarding the appropriateness of investing in any security of the company discussed in this presentation.
Please see www.contrary.com/legal for additional important information.
