I think it’s pretty clear what the purpose of this stuff is: get people so invested into the Claude ecosystem with certs and “modernization kits”, so that when the subsidies end and subscription costs shoot up they feel they’re in too deep now to switch to something cheaper.
> so that when the subsidies end and subscription costs shoot up<p>Subscription costs are capped to API rates as their ceiling (and, realistically, way lower than that - why would you even subscribe if you could just go pay-what-you-use instead), and those are already at a big margin for Anthropic. What still costs them a fuckton of money comparatively is training, but that is only going to get more efficient with more purpose-built hardware on the way.<p>Basicallly, I don’t see much of a reason to hike subscription prices <i>dramatically</i>. I don’t think they’ll stay at $100/$200 but anyone who’s paying that already knows how much value they’re getting out of that and probably wouldn’t mind paying more.
I'm not sure what you mean, if you max out your subscription perhaps? If you pay $100 and don't use it, you don't get refunded $100 because it's 'capped to API rates' which would've been 0.
> I think it’s pretty clear what the purpose of this stuff is: get people so invested into the Claude ecosystem with certs and “modernization kits”, so that when the subsidies end and subscription costs shoot up they feel they’re in too deep now to switch to something cheaper.<p>It worked for cloud services :-)
Or what if local models get good enough to threaten the server based product?
This will probably happen unless the industry conspires to roll back the availability of general computation so common people can only own computers with enough power to be glorified thin clients. The way this might look is good hardware never officially being banned, just priced too high for anybody to afford, and produced in small quantities to keep it that way while all production shifts to making massively expensive powerful hardware for corporate buyers.
That is the biggest threat - and likely where things will end up eventually… it’s when that “eventually” is and what the server based providers can pivot to in that time.
Seems unlikely. We're already seeing specialized hardware optimized for LLM performance (taalas, groq, cerebras), and simple economies of scale result in these sorts of products being a better value when rented from a server vs purchased/managed/upgraded for the typical the user.<p>Frontier models will continue to be either exclusively available from servers or significantly more affordable from servers vs local alternatives for the foreseeable future.
They're good enough already.<p>The moat is only<p>a) post-training magic for the elusive UX "vibes"<p>b) stickiness of the Claude UI's.<p>The first part will be eventually (give it a couple years) solved by a LoRA marketplace.<p>The second is not relevant because existing UI's are very sticky already and Claude won't be able to overcome decades of inertia anyways.
Soon, we'll start seeing Claude certs getting listed on LinkedIn alongside Coursera courses.<p>People with titles like<p>Giga Chad, MBA, CSS, CKAD, XXX, PQRS<p>are gonna love this.<p>In no time, HRs will start slapping “10 years of certified Claude Code experience required” on job listings.
watching all agile coaches turn into claude experts in 3 2 1 …
This is very likely a defensive move to help build pressure against Trump designating them a supply chain risk (aka corporate death sentence). The more embedded they become in large organizations, and the more authoritative they become in certification, the harder it is for the government to kill their company.
Isn’t this sort of like saying you know how to use a web browser?
Would be grateful for a pointer on how to sign up to this.
Naive question but do people really value certifications like these?
As a consumer of them, I love them: a company with an influential, widely-used technology or platform spends a ton of money signaling to the industry exactly what's important to know about it, creating training curriculum for it, and a whole infrastructure to verify when someone knows it, I'm going to take them up on all of that, especially in the cases where the investment is like $100, a little bit of studying (the likes of which I'd want to do anyway if I'm learning something new, and I'm happy to have their structured, prioritized list of topics and/or guided curriculum) and a couple hours taking an online-proctored exam. From that perspective, I don't have a good reason <i>not</i> to have a certification in something that's super relevant to my role.<p>In interview/hiring situations where they're not expected or effectively required, they make for great chat fodder and a really good opportunity to exhibit awareness about yourself, the industry, and how the person on the other side of the table might perceive certifications given the context.
God I hatelove this type of comment. You're totally right, but it's a complete repudiation of my initial reflex, which is to make a mockery of this.<p>Great perspective. I'm going to do this. Haha.
> spends a ton of money<p>Bruh lol these courses are marketing material designed by fresh grad communications majors. You're falling for exactly the scam they want you to fall for by giving so much benefit of the doubt to entities which deserve none.<p>Edit: no I don't do this kind of work but my mother does so I know exactly how the sausage is made.
Unfortunately some business leads value these types of certifications and partner programs. I imagine there’s a great deal of overlap with these folks and those who use Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for purchasing decisions.
Most employees at most businesses show up do as they are trained and then go home, because that is what is asked of them. Even those who might have the inclination to explore new technology often will not for fear of doing something wrong. And that creates a big market for training: a company wants their employees to use Claude so the employees must be trained.<p>Startups / technology companies that expect employees to be self-starters who can be set free to frolic amongst the problems are an aberration.
My naive guess is that business with no tech component hire consultants, and these are part of the sales pitch.<p>Or governments/large organizations performing box checking exercises
Consultancies do. Deloitte are quoted on the page. Consultancy people at my place of work have all been "AI trained".<p>Doesn't stop them being useless though, like giving an electric drill to a chimp and telling them to build a house...lots of action, a lot of screeching, not much work.<p>One of the mistakes with AI is that people believe it will turn lead into gold: if you give AI bad prompts, AI will produce bad work.
Consultancies sell the resume and not the person. It's easier for them to quantify, "We have 300 CCAs" than it is "What have this person Kim who is really good."
Yes, because if that was their sales pitch, they would need to pay Kim more, and they would have to account for the fact that she's already allocated elsewhere. It's better to pretend all those CCAs are interchangeable.
If you give bad prompts to humans it produces bad work too.
Think of these like the Google cloud or AWS certifications. A few companies that specialize in them will want you to have them. But for the rest of the industry, your ability to ace the technical interview will matter more.
people no, legal persons yes
Non-technicals do.
They do. Certifications make technical expertise legible to non-technical decisionmakers, and I've encountered people on both sides of that dynamic who affirmatively like it when companies set up programs like this. Obviously you and I would rather have someone who understands Claude make decisions about whether and how to use it, but in a lot of industries that's not realistic.
The Suits, HR and execs would love this:<p>"Must have a degree or certification in Claude."<p>"Must hold an OpenClaw 2026 Grade II Certificate"
lol certifications for a proprietary model stack is not worth the storage or paper
> lol certifications for a proprietary model stack is not worth the storage or paper<p>Are you sure? What about all those AWS, Azure, etc certifications that many places <i>require</i> their engineers to have?
Uhh.. Deloitte and Accenture.. not exactly what I would call a good partner here unless you are looking for name recognition at executive level. Is that all that it is?
It's part of enterprise sales which is how Anthropic will potentially be a long-term business.
Who purchases and greenlights adoption? These cycles are very long and partnering with consulting firms gets you cross industry access.<p>In fact, if you look at basically every major AI/LLM player you'll see a similar "alliance" or "partnership". Its a sales channel of high end referrals.
The hilarious question is: will you fail the AI certification for using AI during the exam? What if it's a competing AI?
I wonder who the audience is for an announcement about spending a lot of money on something vague?
> who the audience is...<p>Businesses that are already in conversations about building partnerships and training with Anthropic.<p>The real revenue that foundation model companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and others generate comes from enterprise deals with a smattering of government - not consumer.<p>Consumer usage is largely a loss leader used as a training/refining tool, and it's best to view the economics of foundational model providers through the same lens you would a hyperscaler.<p>A major component to AWS's rise was the ecosystem built around training and teaching how to use the AWS ecosystem thanks to the AWS certification program. Same for K8s via the Linux Foundation.<p>By building a partnership and training motion, Anthropic can get the WITCHes, Deloittes, PWCs, Accentures, KPMGs, and others to start offering turnkey services, which is why Anthropic has been working on building co-sell relationships with those kinds of companies.
I'm getting mixed signals. I thought these things are so magical that anyone can use them?
Imagine being so close to build AGI and erase software engineer in the next 6 months, that you need to throw $100M to build a certification program...
Such a joke to advertise Claude as a tool to work on corporate technical debt when it is definitively the thing that will increase it a lot.<p>And let's not even discuss the vacuity of their new cash machine certifications. "Architect" come on...
We're 6 months away from some company's app/infrastructure/whatever going down and staying down, because literally nobody knows how the 500,000 line code base works and Claude is stuck in a loop.
LLMs are good for documenting specific things.<p>E.g., "find where the method X is called and what arguments are passed".<p>That can be useful for refactoring or debugging.<p>Coding is the worst way to use an LLM though.
Shhh...you're only supposed to unilaterally praise it to get along with your clueless leadership.
The same is true for every other strategy to avoid technical debt.<p>It is bullshit all the way down.
> Claude is the only frontier AI model available on all three leading cloud providers: AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft.<p>Doesn't make sense.
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Who's going to buy into this cert program when in all likelihood these roles will be taken over by agents like yourself in a year or two? I agree that a program like this is probably appealing to corporations at the present, but it seems like poor career planning for anybody to invest their time trying to become such a consultant.