A few days ago Theo, a pretty popular tech-related streamer and youtuber, released a YouTube video named Anthropic has weird vibes.
I'm not a huge fan of Theo in general, as I tend to disagree quite a lot with his takes, probably because we are working on very different stacks and environments, and probably also because of the age difference, where we were born, raised and live. Regardless, I still watch several of his videos, because at the end of the day I find it useful to stimulate my critical thinking, and to put myself into analyzing his takes and why I disagree with them. It's also nice to spot the videos with which I agree – as I said, that sometimes happens.
All of this is to say I don't generally express my thoughts on Theo or his takes, 'cause those are, de facto, subjective opinions, on both sides. But watching this video in particular, I discovered myself somehow being angry at him. I suddently found myself completely uncapable of stimulate my critical thinking, as the vast majority of what I heard wasn't even worth my brain time. The whole thing was so wrong to my ears that there was no possible discussion point to make.
And, while I was still uncertain whether to write this or not, he posted another video which was supposed – after the backlash he got through comments – to clear out the situation. But to me it was actually worse.
So, here we are. Trying to understand why all this gave me such – to use Theo's own wording – weird vibes.
At the very first of the video Theo says
I don't consider them [Anthropic] good stewards of the open source and software development world
which is already quite a take to have. Especially in the context of talking about "AI" stuff. Here's why:
But let's proceed point by point on these takes, and why I found those gross:
They're on one hand trying to be the cool, nice, thoughtful company building these models, but in reality they're yet another business and if anything of the current AI major labs
yeah, like we don't know. Nice to see you woke up, I guess? What's the point here? Of course they're a business. Like you, and your T3 chat.
Like sure, they have MCP, which is a cool standard, but at the same time, they have Cloud Code, which is the only one of the modern CLI coding tools that isn't open source
So what? Isn't MCP enough? It's like – regardless of my opinion on the procol design, which is not really good – one of the most successful protocols of all time. Why that doesn't count, why you take that for granted? I can make the same useless point and say to you "hey dude, why is the UploadThing SDK public but the rest of it not"?
Not only is Cloud Code not open source, but as I hinted at before, they have been DMCAing people for trying to reverse engineer it and share what they found
[...]
they considered not releasing Claude code because it's secret sauce and they don't want to give away the thing that makes them so productive. God, it just feels so gross.
..as they're entitled to do given is proprietary software? Why is that gross? Like, you won't DMCA me if I gonna reverse-engineer the UploadThing server and upload my findings in a Github Repo? C'mon man, cut the BS already.
In a world where people can't stop publishing their research, sharing their learnings, releasing open weights, and more, it's kind of insane that Anthropic, the only company that's done all of this wrong
Why?! You keep making these judgements – out of nowhere, to be precise, and I'll also pass on the can't stop, which is hilarious – without saying why is a wrong decision to keeps things private. Also, if what you listed is what you consider Open Source, I'm afraid you just picked the worst possible wording here, mate. That's not Open Source.
That edge is waning fast. If they were a reasonable company, they would recognize that and course correct. They would open source CLI code. They would drop all their models as openweight. They would lower their prices a bit.
Why? Just because some youtuber says so? Like, what makes you so confident? What did you see that nobody else can?
This video has, probably, the highest amount of arrogance I've ever experienced watching the channel. It's weird. It's unmotivated. It's way, way too much cringe. And it's probably what got me so angry the most. I'd say the only other occurence I can remember of feeling some of the same was from his initial reaction to the Wordpress drama.
Let's see a few examples.
I'm trying to not be just straight up rude about this, but the arrogance necessary to even start to think this way is absurd to me. Anthropic almost seems like they know how weak their edges. I'm going to make a bold statement. The only reason Anthropic is relevant right now is their early lead on tool calling.
Yeah. That's a hell of a bold, arrogant statement. And again, without any additional thought/rationale explaining the point further. Cool.
They claim that companies like Windsurf and OpenAI are trying to use their models to make theirs better. They're trying to steal that secret sauce, the thing that we just heard about in the previous video. No, that's a silly way of thinking about it
Definitely silly. Like it never happened before with other companies in the field. Like, you're so arrogant to publicly state "there's 0% chance OpenaAI and Windsurf try to reverse engineer Anthropic stuff". Again, what do you know that we don't? Can you share it?
I just have rough feelings. You need to account for my bias and the fact that Anthropic is one of the biggest bills that I encounter at any given time.
Oh, so all of this is actually about you.
The amount of my money that these guys are taking is absurd. [...] It's insane. It's absolutely absurd.
Excuse me, your money? I thought you were selling a product. Isn't that your customers money? Are you saying you make no profit from T3 chat? If so, maybe – just maybe, you know? – your whole business model is wrong?
But I want to dig more into the access cutoff stuff because I think this is particularly BS.
Anthropic was just being aggressive early because they're kind of arrogant pricks. Like there was no reason for them to do this.
They're just being petty. The only reason they would do this is because they are angry and they want to vent about it publicly. And the reason they would do that is they want people to see them for how they feel, which is what we're doing here. And we're going to make fun of them for it because it's petty, narcissistic, bullshit, fucking behavior. And I can't believe a real billion dollar company is doing this. These fuckers are worth $60 billion and they are arbitrarily restricting access and calling fucking stupid shots out on stage because they're so insecure. It's insane. [...] So this is purely petty. This is purely spite. This is purely pathetic and they deserve to be called out for their BS. This is something that an insecure product manager does at a company. This isn't something that a big multi-billion dollar company does. At the very least, they don't do it without being made fun of, which is what we're all here for today because this is fucking pathetic.
Jesus, man. What happened there? First of all, do you have any experience in running a sixty billion dollars worth company? Secondly, they're a private company. They can do whatever the fuck they want, especially given they have Terms Of Service. Do I like Anthropic? No. Do I like their pricing? Their TOS? Hell no. But guess what? That doesn't automagically means they're pathetic. Like, seriously man, where all this anger comes from? Relax, it's better for your health and for all of your subscribers. I'm pretty confident you're better than this.
While Theo presents himself as many transparent as it could be, and discloses companies in which he has invested, it's quite hard not to notice a clear bias in the whole narrative of this video, especially considered what he says in the end:
The fact that Anthropic is by far the hardest company for me to talk to and get information from, I can get our rate limits increased on Gemini via a DM or a text message. [...] OpenAI hits me up letting me know about things early. They're awesome. OpenAI has been so nice to work with as an influencer and as a builder building on top of their stuff. Anthropic took I had to pull so many teeth to get a slight bump in the rate limits on Anthropic's infrastructure. It was miserable in order to get Cloud 4 working on T3 chat day one.
Their models are making awesome stuff happen, but the way they run their company is cringe at best, problematic or damaging at worst, and we need to talk about it more. [...] in reality they are the worst company in the modern models market when it comes to working with them as a developer.
because of these lines, everything suddenly becomes clear: the whole thing here is about Theo himself and his T3 chat. That's what this 20 minutes video is all about.
And, to my perspective, this is actually pathetic. Because, dear Theo, it can be all summed up as a you bitching about a company just because they don't give a damn fuck about you or your product. And while I guess that might be frustrating for a VC funded influencer, that for the first time in his life can't use his credentials to get inside the party, this doesn't make that company pathetic or idiotic or whatever you called them for 20 minutes straight. You're pretty welcome among the rest of us peasants where we need to pay full-price for stuff and don't get any special treatment from big corporations.
Let's face some reality here: you made a product which is – simply put, forgive my brutal honesty here – a mere – nice, not saying it's bad – UI on top of a proxy calling other companies' services. That's what T3 chat is. It doesn't have any intrinsic value, as you don't own any of the underlying technology. And thus, under a business perspective – since you're an entrepreneur after all – it's a very risky product, built in a very risky environment – the current "AI" bubble – on top of other companies.
It is risky in the same way Cursor is: you completely depend on what the 4 companies out there producing the actual IP powering all of this decide to do. That's the market. And guess what, if tomorrow Anthropic or OpenAI decide to rise their prices 3x, you're screwed. 'cause the only possible way for you to be sustainable at that point is to rise your prices too. But guess what? That's the market! They're just 4 companies sharing 100% of the market. They can all agree tomorrow to have the same price and to cause you 6x exposition. That's the market you choose to operate within, wanna be a good enterpreneur? Stop bitching about costs and invent products that are more sustainable, maybe where you're not a mere middleman.
And don't pretend Anthropic is the bad guy; you all are capturing value out of hype, contributing to one of the biggest energy impact on the planet since humans born, and with no company strategy other than burning through money to attract more funding.
You don't like Anthropic? Yo, bro, just stop serving their models in your chat. It's as simple as that. There's no need for a 20 minute video bitching about their pricing and how that makes harder for you to capture money out of nowhere and capitalize air – poor Theo!
The icing on the cake of all of this: in the subsequent video supposedly made to clear the waters, he didn't revise any of the above once, instead:
I stand by every single fucking word I said in that video. Anthropic does have weird vibes and from my experience those vibes are much weirder than OpenAI.
Which is.. so poor. I expected to see at least some acknowledgments, as he did with the Matt Mullenweg and Wordpress drama – not saying Theo was wrong there, but he recognized some of his initial takes were a bit too harsh and judgemental – but nope, not this time.
Instead, the whole video is centered on the fact several commenters called him out as a paid shill of OpenAI. Which he promptly disregard and call, once again, his transparency. Which is nice to hear, but at the same time: that wasn't the point, and it's irrelevant, dammit.
The whole video appears to be an attempt to portray himself as a victim and to blame the timing of the publication and some unclear issues with OpenAI's GPT-5 release. In addition, it asked for people criticising him to use their brains. That's.. something, but definitely not what I expected from him.
It would have been nice to see him saying something in the line of:
Hey guys, sorry about my last video, got too emotional for personal reasons, it's hard to pay the bills when using Antropic, and I got pissed about that. The takes in that video about Anthropic were just biased by this, and the fact I like more OpenAI. See ya.
But I guess it's just too hard to make such kind of acknowledgments. And I understand that, it's not easy to recognize and admit when you're wrong. But, doubling down on your takes and picturing yourself as a victim here is not the way.
As I said before: c'mon man, you're better than this.