Gary Marcus：警惕Anthropic用ARR概念混淆视听
ARR vs ARR. Watch out for this one sly trick.
Pretty good autogenerated cartoon — except that the sign the ref is holding completely misses the important fact that both terms have the same acronym.
相当不错的自动生成的卡通——除了裁判举着的牌子完全忽略了一个重要事实，即这两个术语的首字母缩写相同。
Anthropic’s boosters are rushing to celebrate their ARR.
Anthropic 的拥趸们正急于庆祝他们的 ARR。
As they do, be mindful that the acronym ARR can actually mean two rather different things, Annual Recurring Revenue or Annualized Run Rate. (And 65 other things, less immediately relevant.) You might think they are the same, but they are not.
在他们这样做的时候，要留意首字母缩写 ARR 实际上可以指代两种截然不同的含义：年度经常性收入（Annual Recurring Revenue）或年化运行率（Annualized Run Rate）。（还有另外 65 种含义，与当前语境关联较小。）你可能认为它们是一样的，但其实不然。
What the boosters want you to think of is Annual Recurring Revenue. Annual Recurring Revenue is great; that’s things like subscriptions, which means next year likely to be same as (or better than) this year. Annual Recurring Revenue recurs.
那些拥趸希望你想到的是年度经常性收入。年度经常性收入是个好东西；它指的是订阅之类的业务，意味着明年的情况很可能与今年相同（甚至更好）。年度经常性收入是持续发生的。
Annualized Run Rate, alas, means no such thing. It can mean as little as you did something like took your best month, multiplied by 12 and projected that your best month this month would be your average month next year. That could happen. Or maybe your best month is NOT your typical month, and it will be better than your average month next year. You might in fact never have a full year that is twelve times your best month.
遗憾的是，年化运行率并非如此。它可能仅仅意味着你做了类似这样的计算：取你表现最好的那个月的数据，乘以 12，并预测你本月最好的月份将成为你明年每月的平均水平。这种情况确实可能发生。或者，也许你表现最好的月份并不是你的典型月份，而明年你的平均表现会比这个最佳月份更好。事实上，你可能永远无法实现一整年的收入都达到你单月最高收入的十二倍。
When people tell you Anthropic had this or that ARR, you really need to know which meaning they are talking about. They rarely tell you. But they really mean the latter.
当有人告诉你 Anthropic 拥有某种 ARR 时，你真的需要知道他们指的是哪种含义。他们很少会明确说明。但他们真正指的往往是后者。
Indeed, THE big issue for Anthropic is that the kind of revenue they were making in the second quarter of this year may well not recur, at the same scale, next year, now that, in the aftermath of the collapse of tokenmaxxing, companies like ATT are increasingly turning to open source models from other vendors, in order to save costs.
事实上，Anthropic 面临的一个重大问题是，他们在今年第二季度获得的收入类型，随着 tokenmaxxing 崩溃后的余波，像 ATT 这样的公司为了节省成本，越来越多地转向其他供应商的开源模型，因此明年可能不会以同样的规模重复出现。
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Speaking of meteoric rises that might not last, back in 1995 Netscape had revenue. Lots of it. Doubling every quarter. They went public. They were worth billions without having ever turned a profit. (Sound familiar?)
说到可能无法持续的迅猛崛起，早在 1995 年，Netscape 就拥有收入。大量的收入。每个季度翻倍。他们上市了。在从未盈利的情况下，他们的价值已达数十亿美元。（听起来很耳熟吗？）
The astonishing rise of Netscape, before it’s fall.
Netscape 惊人的崛起，以及随后的衰落。
And then things changed. Later that year, Microsoft offered a competitor, for free, and Netscape was never the same, all but out of the game a decade later.
然后事情发生了变化。同年晚些时候，微软推出了免费的竞争对手，Netscape 从此一蹶不振，十年后几乎退出了竞争舞台。
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When someone boasts about ARR, be sure you know which term they are referring to. Caveat emptor.
当有人吹嘘他们的 ARR 时，务必确认他们指的是哪个术语。买者自负。
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