TLDR: Reddit sued Anthropic yesterday for allegedly scraping 100,000+ times after promising to stop, refusing to pay licensing fees that Google and OpenAI happily fork over.
This isn’t just another lawsuit.
It’s a battle for the future of AI training data and who controls the internet’s most valuable conversations.
Enter Reddit’s data goldmine.
Picture this.
You’re sitting on a goldmine of 20 years’ worth of authentic human conversations covering everything from shower thoughts to cryptocurrency conspiracies.
Then, some AI company rolls up, takes your treasure without asking and builds a $3 billion business with it.
Oops.
That’s exactly what Reddit claims happened with Anthropic and they’re pissed.
Now, let’s talk about the lawsuit that changes everything.
On June 4th, Reddit filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court.
They’re accusing Anthropic, the company behind Claude of being the tech equivalent of that friend who says they’ll split the dinner bill but conveniently forgets their wallet.
Reddit claims Anthropic’s bots hit their servers over 100,000 times after the company promised to stop scraping their content.
For context, that’s like someone saying “I’ll stop borrowing your car” and then proceeding to take joyrides every single day.
Anthropic has worked hard to position itself as the ethical AI company, the white knight in a messy industry.
Reddit’s suit rips into that image.
What makes this lawsuit even more fascinating?
Reddit already figured out how to monetize their data.
They’ve signed licensing deals worth a combined $130 million annually.
$60 million with Google and an estimated $70 million with OpenAI.
That’s not pocket change by any measure.
These deals now make up around 10% of Reddit’s total revenue.
For a company that went public just last year, that’s material money.
The irony?
Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman admitted they used to give that data away for free until they realized AI companies were in an arms race to stockpile training data.
Talk about learning the hard way that your digital conversations are worth billions!
Reddit adapted. Anthropic didn’t pay.
That’s the whole ballgame.
It get’s worse.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman is Reddit’s third-largest shareholder, with an 8.7% stake.
So while Reddit is suing one AI company, it’s literally in bed with another.
This creates a bizarre triangle where Reddit is suing Anthropic for using their data without permission, getting paid millions by OpenAI and Google for the exact same data, and enriching a board member who stands at the center of it all.
We’re moving from an era where AI companies could scrape whatever they wanted to a world where content creators are building paywalls around their digital assets.
Want our data? Pay up or lawyer up.
For AI companies, this signals a new reality.
Training data isn’t free anymore. It’s now a licensing expense that could run into the hundreds of millions per year.
Anthropic, despite being valued at over $60 billion and backed by Amazon, might soon discover that even unicorns need to pay for their digital hay.
Ney, platforms, ney.
The outcome of this case could reshape how AI companies source training data forever. If Reddit wins, expect every platform with valuable user-generated content to start demanding licensing fees.
If Anthropic prevails on fair use grounds, it could open the floodgates for more aggressive data scraping. Either way, the wild west days of free AI training data are officially over.
Welcome to the era where your Reddit arguments about pineapple on pizza might be worth actual money, just not to you.
Until next time.
Blake.