Parker Conrad

Rippling payroll & HRIS admin, CEO.

Nothing here should be construed as investment advice nor used in any investment decisions related to Rippling.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

At scale, all B2B products converge. It’s reports, alerts, workflow, permissions and approvals all the way down.

[karl yang @chiefofstuffs]

In B2B “build something people want” often turns into “build all the custom reports that Jerry on the finance team at {customer} thinks he wants”

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@micsolana And they have pivoted to now propose it down to assets of $50mm. Not just for billionaires anymore!

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@hunvreus @Altimor What law is “IP law”? IP law describes a category of protections that includes patents, copyrights, trademarks… which of those protections did these companies transgress in your view?

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

This is why access to open weights matters - GLM 5.2 is 85% cheaper but nearly identical performance.

Really impressive to see how well Grok 4.5 perform here, on a set of benchmarks that labs are not training against.

[Matt MacInnis @stanine]

New: we ran ~2100 scored runs on open-weight models and lab models and found some big surprises. Grok (@spacexai) was the value leader, and GLM (@Zai_org) is super close to the frontier. I guess this is why the 'labs' are nervous... https://t.co/BjpVf9QFk2

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@Altimor @woke8yearold If I find a foreign co that was stealing from my company, can I get the government to block them in the USA, based just on my allegation? Or is this only for Anthropic?

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@Altimor @gabrielnocode Do you think there is any standard or burden that Anthropic must meet in order to get government protection from someone they accuse of “stealing”? Is anthropic’s accusation all you need? Is this a special deal for Anthropic or do other companies get it too?

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@woke8yearold @Altimor You absolutely can sue them in the US

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@Altimor @woke8yearold What you are proposing is the opposite! Enforcement without any judgement! At least get the judgement first!

And the enforcement isn’t against Chinese companies — it’s against *american* companies, restraining them from using open weight models.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@woke8yearold @Altimor Generally in this country we have civil remedies for this, and they first require companies to prove their allegations in court. Anthropic has not even attempted to do this.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@Altimor Drugs are protected by patent laws. Anthropic is welcome to file patents and try to protect their innovations in that way. But they have not done so! So I think this is a very very silly analogy.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@jasonlk The immediate benefit is that frontier models are somewhat bloated. Which is why it’s so easy for app cos to beat frontier model performance on specialized tasks by distilling an open model. We don’t need our LLM to write sonnets, just SQL. Smaller, specialized wins.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

Anthropic isn’t anti-datacenter. They are pro regulating-open-weight-models-out-of-existence.

[Jon Stokes @jon_stokes]

I would say this is the dumbest episode of mass delusion I've ever seen in my life, but I lived through the 2020s. Anyway, I truly did not see the leading lights of the industry joining forces with the anti-datacenter crowd, yet here we are.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@garrytan I am very much in favor of "old" founders, having the misfortune to be considered one myself at this point. But that chart ends in 2020! I suspect things have trended WAY younger in the last 3 years.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@PhilipAnderse No, changed dramatically starting fall of last year.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@MatthewBerman It really just goes to show how entirely disingenuous anthropic’s position is.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@estill01 @lessin Even without API access, if you build a product where queries and responses (to say nothing of traces) are visible to the end user it may be hard to prevent distillation. And without queries and responses visible to your customer, hard to see how you make money.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

If Anthropic is right and distillation is impossible to prevent, it follows that the strategic value of anyone opening a lead on frontier model capabilities is short-lived, and national security arguments for protectionism fall apart. If china pulls ahead we can distill them!

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@KatieS @USWREMichael @SarahKHeck @AnthropicAI @DeptofWar I think it is the transparent and cynical way that Anthropic is asking to be awarded a state-mandated duopoly in the name of “national security” at the expense of every other business, while simultaneously blocking the military’s ability to use it for national security.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@lessin It may be that it’s impossible to use these things commercially without opening yourself to some form of distillation or reverse engineering, particularly as distillation gets more sophisticated.

[Parker Conrad @parkerconrad]

@zachtratar @Altimor There is trade secret theft. Copyright violations. Patent infringement. “Intellectual property theft” is not a thing — at least not with the force of law.