Big Technology Podcast
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.
00:32:37 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[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. [00:32:59] S0: Let's just do our bottom line on the Anthropic IPO. Do you think it goes out? It's supposed to go out week of November 16. That's what people are saying. Do you think that happens? And if so, what do you think the valuation is? [00:33:10] S1: It's so tough. I mean, I think we're gonna see a lot more volatility over the next three to four weeks. Definitely. I think people as we said, we don't know already just that uncertainty the first ten, fifteen minutes of us kind of trying to understand where things are right now and realizing we have no clue is how investors everywhere are gonna feel right now. And if the market keeps tanking, that makes the decision to go out really, really difficult. And I don't know. I still think even... Yeah. Even like anything above 1,000,000,000,000, think they should be very, very relieved and happy with. But also remember, when we keep throwing these numbers out, that assumes there are buyers on the other end. If the market is tanking, like, the retail investor community, like, the willingness to jump into a rich valuation just because the stock was hyped, that has worked for the last number of years. That's gonna be the first thing to go.
00:33:10 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:33:10] S1: It's so tough. I mean, I think we're gonna see a lot more volatility over the next three to four weeks. Definitely. I think people as we said, we don't know already just that uncertainty the first ten, fifteen minutes of us kind of trying to understand where things are right now and realizing we have no clue is how investors everywhere are gonna feel right now. And if the market keeps tanking, that makes the decision to go out really, really difficult. And I don't know. I still think even... Yeah. Even like anything above 1,000,000,000,000, think they should be very, very relieved and happy with. But also remember, when we keep throwing these numbers out, that assumes there are buyers on the other end. If the market is tanking, like, the retail investor community, like, the willingness to jump into a rich valuation just because the stock was hyped, that has worked for the last number of years. That's gonna be the first thing to go. [00:34:16] S0: I think it goes out... I'll call it November 19, and I'm gonna say 1,300,000,000,000. And it'll it'll be a good good outcome for this company. And, course, it's just the beginning. Well, not the beginning. It's the middle of the story. Right? It's not the end. Okay. [00:34:34] S1: Week is not thanks... Oh, no. It's week before Thanksgiving. Alright? [00:34:37] S0: Week before Thanksgiving. Yeah. I mean, I've just canceled a trip to the Bay Area that week in anticipation for the thing happening. [00:34:45] S1: So That's why I asked.
00:34:45 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:34:45] S1: So That's why I asked. [00:34:47] S0: Let's see if I'm right or not. I'm gonna try to manifest it. Manifest it. Alright. [00:34:52] S1: What Do it for Alex. [00:34:53] S0: One last thing before [00:34:53] S1: Alex and his travel schedule. He's gonna be in New York ready Yes. Right by the stock exchange, ready to go. [00:35:00] S0: I don't wanna have to bring this seat anywhere else. Okay? It's a big chair. [00:35:05] S1: You need to get the... Get a chair like that back at home. That thing, it's regal. You said royal regal. It brings a different feel. [00:35:13] S0: Describe it? [00:35:13] S1: It's a [00:35:14] S0: I think you need to describe it for audio. [00:35:16] S1: It's a kind of reddish tan. Again, looks like it very well could have been nicked as they say from Buckingham Palace. There's kind of those two wings on the side that stick out. A chair you would smoke a cigar on, smoke a pipe on, that you would sign a contract colonizing parts of India back in the eighteen hundreds as Lord Mountbatten. That is definitely a chair that did some colonialism at some point to me. [00:35:55] S0: Well, I can tell you I I will be doing doing none of these things. [00:35:58] S1: So No cigars or colonialism abilities. Today. Not tonight, at least.
00:35:58 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:35:58] S1: So No cigars or colonialism abilities. Today. Not tonight, at least. [00:36:04] S0: I have other things to do. Alright. Before we go to break, I just wanna get your perspective on whether you think that... We talk a lot about the comms problem that the AI industry has, and this is obviously... All these problems right now are potentially a manifestation of that problem or downstream of the problem. Do you think that the AI industry can turn this around? And then saying it's very important to ask because we already have some news from open AI saying that it will avoid NDAs when it negotiates data center deals. It's going to say that residents will not pay for electricity to power those projects. It's going to say it's going to turn these things instead it's going to turn them down during peak electricity hours. And I wonder if we'll see an about face because up until now, you know, though the AI industry has said that everything's above board, clearly, they they know that there's work to be done, because they're coming out with these reforms. And, you know, you look at places like Louisiana, there was this New York Times story from July that I think we talked about, where like data centers have started just appearing in local communities, that they're being, you know, they've been placed under secret code names, and they just show up. And that that may or or may not... You know, well, that's clearly not sustainable. So do you think there's a way for them to turn it around? And if so, how?
00:37:22 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:37:22] S1: It's... What do we... What are we calling the AI industry here? Is that Google meta OpenAI Anthropic? Are we calling it... Like, what are you referring to as AI in NVIDIA as well? Anyone [00:37:39] S0: with a stake in data centers being AI data centers being How about that? Okay. So it include the neo clouds, but we know who really is, you know, who drives the narrative here. It's the OpenAI, it's the Anthropic, it's Jensen, it's Mark Zuckerberg. [00:37:53] S1: I think there's an opportunity for some number of politicians, some number of kind of like un... Untarnished voices and faces and people to actually start to kind of assert themselves as the face of the AI industry. Again, we we we had joked in the past, like Jensen could be the good guy of AI. Like, Dario and Sam and Jensen and Elon and all will never be the good guy in the face of the American people for the AI industry. I think maybe there is room for both politicians and other leaders to kind of step up and fill that void and gap. But I I don't think the... For how brutal the effort of trying to actually be... You know, like, not care about what anyone thought over the last couple of years, I don't think you're just gonna walk back from that that easily. Do you think they suddenly friendly Sam touring America, going to farms and stuff like that and doing one of those tours they used to do back in the nineties? Do you think he might do that?