Google is not selling picks and shovels — it is underwriting the miner
2026-08-20AI
The claim going round is that Google quietly left the AI race and now profits from everyone else's: Cloud up 82%, TPUs sold to Anthropic, no risk taken. The growth figure is exactly right. The risk part is not — Google took roughly 20% of an Anthropic data centre and agreed to cover the lease and power if Anthropic defaults.