I think this has existed as an intentional goal for a long time, albeit from another point of view. I'm thinking of like the piracy days of early 2000, then there was talk about how to lock down devices to prevent any sort of copying of media. The discussion sort of died when Spotify came. But I'm worrying that this development will trigger a reemergence of such a goal. As your self built computer will be more and more expensive, a new possibilty may open up to sell prebuilts that are more locked down. Similarly to how Android is moving from a more open device to a locked down one. HDMI forum locking down their protocols. This may become reality for your general purpose computer. Companies controlling compute and media streaming have a similar motive here, if they do set their mind to it to have this as a fully intentional goal... sigh

It's not circular, but it is unclear under which conditions and when Anthropic will pay for the servers, as they don't have enough money right now. The article says that they intend to lease some of the servers, but also that AMD will provide a "financial backstop". It seems to me AMD is taking all the risk to get a foothold in the industry.

That's not greedy — it's smart.