logoalt Hacker News

1718627440 • yesterday at 10:11 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

But these dummy companies only exist on paper, you would of course not duplicate any actual work for them.


Replies

PeterisP • yesterday at 10:21 PM

Only in the sense that all companies legally exist only on paper - splitting a large company in many legally discinct 149-employee legal entities is possible (some industries have practices like that, e.g. construction and real estate sometimes spawn a separate company for each major building) but would absolutely create lots of very real work and other costs for legal, tax, general finance and HR functions. And simply faking many 149-employee LLCs while not having them actually be real entities is both unlikely to succeed (like, B2B transactions can't be pseudonymous, Anthropic knows your company's registration data) and would also technically be criminal fraud so high (personal!) risk for the small gain in API pricing.

➕ show 1 reply
80fj0348i • yesterday at 10:15 PM

That "clever hack" you just thought up is called "fraud" and is very illegal. Anthropic could cut you off as soon as they found out, and if they wanted, sue you for infringement, the way Oracle and Microsoft do.

https://xkcd.com/1494/

(Also, I don't know about other countries but the IRS would have some questions for you after a few years of running a corp that doesn't appear to actually do anything).

➕ show 1 reply