Big Technology Podcast
00:24:40 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:24:40] S1: I was ready. I I didn't need a popsicle soup. I just needed... I wasn't hungry anymore, and that would get me out enough. [00:24:50] S0: That's right. Turns out those popsicles aren't as nutritious as as you thought, which maybe you should have thought before you made those commitments to buy them, but whatever. We won't really litigate that contract. Let's actually talk about what this means for the Anthropic IPO. Because the reports are now that this is from the Wall Street Journal, major investors are skeptical and tropic and tropic can achieve a 1,500,000,000,000 valuation, it kind of goes back to my theory of the case that I showed that I laid out before. The only reason anthropic was considered for $2,000,000,000,001,500,000,000,000 valuation was because of the story. And now look at a lot of facts to back up the story. But again, like if some of the spokes are getting knocked out, then what do you do? So what do you think is gonna happen? [00:25:35] S1: Oh, man. Oh, man. Okay. I I just have to go off a little bit here that I don't know if you... Did you see today in the Wall Street Journal that there was a leak and a person familiar with the matter leaks that now Anthropic for October is showing an $80,000,000,000 run rate. You cannot Yes. [00:25:56] S0: I I did see not
00:25:56 · Alex Kantrowitz, Ranjan Roy
[00:25:56] S0: I I did see not [00:25:57] S1: leak financials this close to an IPO. That never happens. That is not supposed to happen. That is not how any of this works. And still after all of this, these targeted leaks that are trying to kind of reinforce a narrative that totally make every audited financial and this entire process meaningless and a joke continues. I'm sorry. This one just killed me. I thought, you know what? Your your targeted financial leaks leading up to the s one and then the s one amendment, good. You very smart communication, but still doing that after all those meetings and after all that and still kind of like obfuscating any possible chance of us having an understanding of what Anthropic's actual story is and what their financial story is. This is killing me. I I hope... Don't know. The... I was... The entire breakdown of all that is good in The US financial markets and the norms that have been established for decades upon decades just getting shattered.
00:27:06 · Alex Kantrowitz
[00:27:06] S0: But let me ask you this. Would you leak those numbers if you thought the IPO was imminent? Or would you leak those numbers because you thought given the current environment, you were postponing the IPO anyway, and you wanted to get the narrative out? Because this is an interesting headline from CNBC, Anthropic IPO announcement odds drop on Kalshi following midterms in AI self. And the last week, odds that Anthropic would announce an IPO before December fell from nearly 90% on Kalshi to 57%, which is a massive move. So what do you think? Do you think that there is a chance that Anthropic pushes this thing off? And if so, what would that implications be for the rest of the AI trade? Because again, we talked about how there are there are these two companies that are basically holding this market up. And Anthropic is one of them. And if that IPO postpones, look out.
00:28:02 · Ranjan Roy
[00:28:02] S1: I think that they have to. I agree. For for for the sake of everyone and for the sake of the industry, they kinda have to, but also from... For themselves. I mean, we had gone back and forth on Twitter a little bit where you were talking about how like, you know, you had your good q three, your your record q two, a little bit of a nice amendment on q three without the full picture. But like everything, every headwind is kicking in right now. So to me, that normally means you shouldn't go out because in reality like that is actually asking retail investors to hold the bag and it's like, let's let everyone cash out and have others actually own that risk and hold that risk while we enrich ourselves. So I think, I still think that's not a great way to look at it but I think, I mean think about it like the initial $2,000,000,000,000 was all off of that Q2 and kind of that momentum in those growth rates. Already we had talk and it was going down to 1,500,000,000,000 now. There's reporting yesterday it could be between one point two and one point three. I I... Do you think if it falls below 1,000,000,000,000 in terms of what they're seeing appetite around? Do you think you... Do you pause? Do you stop the process? Because in reality, like, this is all momentum. Anthropic had a historic eight month period, and is still a very, very successful business. But like, this story will never be the same again. It won't. So
00:29:37 · Alex Kantrowitz, Ranjan Roy
[00:29:37] S0: I think you go out. I think you still go out. I mean, as you're saying, and as I said, yesterday on x and you came and fought me on it. You're gonna go IPO with this unbelievable growth surge, the token maxing era, a bit of a slowdown in q three, but not terrible, and a big October. So however much, but we don't know it's the way that [00:30:03] S1: it was October. [00:30:04] S0: Yeah, a supposed big October, right? I think I think if you remember, if you pause, what you're doing is your the growth rate will inevitably slow from this initial s one flip because because the growth has been extraordinary and law of large numbers, you can't keep that up forever. And you also have, and I think this is potentially underrated. You have OpenAI, which has made this big enterprise push, which is doing well in enterprise. And which may... Which I think most likely has more compute than Anthropic does. Because remember, over the past year, we've talked about how Anthro... OpenAI bet much more on compute and took this riskier what Dario would say YOLO path. And in an era where like the cost to build data centers are higher, the political obstacles to build data centers are higher. Open AI is potentially set up to go on a nice little run here. And if you're Anthropic, do you really want to wait until that run is over? Or your your mid run to then like, say, okay, we're gonna now go with our delayed IPO. I don't think Anthropic has any choice but to go out now.
00:31:10 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:31:10] S1: I agree. I agree. I don't think they have a choice. It's still crazy to me because again, IPOs and buying a stock is supposed to be forward looking, not backward looking. The incredible growth only is interesting if you're supposed to extrapolate that out that incredible growth. If the idea is holy shit, you had an incredible run of growth and that is gonna be declining, so we need to get out to the market and have others buy our stock, does not make sense to me. I'm not saying it's not gonna happen. Markets have gotten pretty weird for a while now, but but I I agree that, like, from a purely self interested, like, just what matters to every individual at that company, they need to go out and fast. And I also agree, like remember, I mean, Anthropic was nowhere relative to OpenAI just two years ago. Things moved so fast and changed so fast that the entire narrative could shift for them very quickly. [00:32:17] S0: So SpaceX is at $1,800,000,000,000. I think Anthropic can pull off 1.5, even though it's like slightly different businesses. If SpaceX hasn't been, you know, I mean, slammed harder than it... Then... Well, it's... Oh, it was... Oh, it's trading underneath its IPO price, actually. And also at $1.33 now. [00:32:37] S1: SpaceX. Has one thing that is very different than Anthropic. Elon Musk and the greatest capital raiser of all time and that is his gift and he can kind of like will the retail investor community better than anyone else and Anthropic does not have that. So I still think I don't think that's the right corollary there.