Anthropic Files to Go Public (cnbc.com) 36
Anthropic says it has confidentially filed an IPO prospectus with the SEC, "setting up a potentially historic share sale for investors ready to jump into artificial intelligence," reports CNBC. The move puts Anthropic ahead of OpenAI's expected filing and follows explosive reported growth, a massive new valuation, major infrastructure deals, and ongoing tensions with the Pentagon over its models. From the report: "This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review," Anthropic said in a statement on Monday. "The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors."
Submitting a confidential prospectus doesn't lock Anthropic into a certain timeframe for going public. Its official prospectus just has to land in the hands of investors at least 15 days before the company begins a roadshow. [...] The company has experienced explosive growth this year, announcing in May that its revenue run rate has ballooned to $47 billion, up from $10 billion in annual revenue last year. Last week, it closed a funding round at a $965 billion valuation, topping OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in late March.
Submitting a confidential prospectus doesn't lock Anthropic into a certain timeframe for going public. Its official prospectus just has to land in the hands of investors at least 15 days before the company begins a roadshow. [...] The company has experienced explosive growth this year, announcing in May that its revenue run rate has ballooned to $47 billion, up from $10 billion in annual revenue last year. Last week, it closed a funding round at a $965 billion valuation, topping OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in late March.
Beholden to shareholders? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't this place the business at the mercy of the shareholder's whims?
Don't this just make them chase never-ending profit to the detriment of all?
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Don't this just make them chase never-ending profit to the detriment of all?
What were they doing before? Boiling the oceans, buying all the ram in the world, gaslighting investors (Mythos is scary! we can't show you but trust us!); they have never been about anything *but* the detriment of all.
Re:Beholden to shareholders? (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh, they were the only frontier AI company to tell the US government "we won't let you use our models to mass surveil US citizens, or mass murder non-citizens" ... even at the cost of literally millions, if not billions of dollars in sales (they lost access to any US government customer).
I won't claim the're the perfect company, but the other (purely profit-driven) AI companies have demonstrated they will do both of those things. You have to give Anthropic some credit ... although it does raise the possibility that, post-IPO, they might become the same as those other companies.
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Those companies are all run by people that are by-and-large not computer experts, pay a lot for software, and are just salivating that the idea of not paying so much for software. They've been sold a fantasy by the AI con-artists, and now they can't possibly change course because that would be embarrassing. The entire AI industry is an incredibly successful con at this point.
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Anthropic wasn't quite the charity before. Highest token prices, a lot of fearmongering, etc.
If you're looking for more user oriented AI look into the Asian direction. Mostly China, but LG's models are also nice.
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However, going public also forces discipline on a company, in a way that privately held ones lack.
For a while, Zuckerberg was fixated on developing a goofy online world that looked like a 15 year old MMO. Oh yeah he called it Metaverse, right? He flushed billions of dollars of internal money to developing it, because nobody can tell him "no" when it comes to running the Facebook empire.
If Musk's companies be
Re:Beholden to shareholders? (Score:5, Informative)
If Musk's companies become subject to more shareholder scrutiny, the shareholders might eventually balk at an AI that specializes in neo-nazi philosophy and revenge porn.
Unfortunately this isn't possible, the terms of the SpaceX IPO are the logical end game of how Silicon Valley structures their companies. The voting structure makes Musk literally impossible to fire. He personally retains enough class B shares to have majority controlling interest, no collection of shareholders can ever vote him out, or his hand picked board. He learned from how Tesla shareholders kept a leash on him, and he has made sure that can't happen again. By placing xAI under SpaceX, both are immune to any shareholder influence.
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Before being publicly traded they were privately traded. Any start up that IPOs already has a board and shareholders. And often even shareholder elections, at least for the voting class shares.
Having a practical way to cash out is what being public means. And unfortunately that can also lead to management (board or non-board) playing fast and loose with goals and reporting in order to pump up a stock price. So that employee and executive alike can bleed off some of their holdings as a tidy little bonus. Eve
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1) Chasing profit isn't a bad thing, it's the actual correct thing. Building a business that can provide a new useful function to society and doing it profitably means it can provide that valuable capability without investor or government welfare. Profit is the goal, because it means the value it provides is sustainable.
2) Being a public company doesn't make you beholden to shareholders. It already is behol
Re: Beholden to shareholders? (Score:1)
Lol hell no. Most shares are owned by ETF indexes. The way the ETF managers vote determines the outcome, and that outcome can be arranged with a bit of bribery.
Now you know wh most public companies are run by incompetant tumors in suits who don't give a damn about the shareholder. They've been tokenized away from any sort of relevance.
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Anthropic where always a for-profit company, meaning that chasing a profit is a fiduciary legal requirement.
Tbh, of all the AI bro companies, Anthropic are the least obnoxious, and I do wonder how their stance against weaponization survives when board is stacked with venture capitalists instead of TESCRAL doomers.
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Doesn't this place the business at the mercy of the shareholder's whims?
Don't this just make them chase never-ending profit to the detriment of all?
As to the first: it depends a lot on how the stock issuance is written. If it's anything like the SpaceX structure, or Facebook's IPO, the voting shares will be jealously guarded; most stockholders will be junior status, non-voting.
As to the second: is that any different than thing now? Do you think Anthropic hasn't already been chasing never-ending profit to the detriment of all? They may talk and dress Claude up a bit nicer than Altman or Musk, but the rapacious desire is still all over it.
IPO for billions, sells for millions later. (Score:3)
Re:IPO for billions, sells for millions later. (Score:5, Interesting)
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What about Micron?
It's just like the gold rush. The profits were made by those selling equipment and supplies, not those panning for gold.
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The IPO push is tied to their profit forecasts, and they expect to be profitable in Q2. They're revenue is growing rapidly and it's likely true they'll actually turn their first profit, so don't bet against it.
I guess its all those multi billion dollar dot coms that were later sold for a fraction of their IPO valuation
Sure. That could happen again. And again. It's even likely with these LLM operators. A few years from now the necessary hardware be lower cost and lower power. The models they've built will be cloned and surpassed by multiple competitors.
But in the immediate future investors will fill Anthropi
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> I don't think it can be profitable.
Oh it can be - but it'll be a shadow of its current form to do it.
IMHO, this is uninvestable (like SpaceX, for similar fundamentals, although different causes). That is, you can speculate on the share price going up and down - that's fine. But before you buy and hold, or buy in because you like them or you use Claude or some other emotional reason, think about how they're going to have to change pretty fundamentally to go anywhere - including losing their morals and i
Dump time? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now we get to see how "creative" Anthropic and OpenAI have been overall. Should these be the same level as the SpaceX IPO it's all about getting early money out before the hype bubble pops.
I'm guessing they ran out of private money and are DESPERATE to either 1) get the big money out and preserve their status in the valley, or 2) get money to keep the furnaces burning while they pray for inference to get magically cheaper.
They have how many bill
Re: Dump time? (Score:2)
My worry (Score:2)
Worse: We're going to see average investors in retail funds are *forced* to buy SpaceX (and Anthropic, and OpenAI) at the top. This will hurt many for the benefit of a very select few.
Just trying to get ahead of the Bust (Score:4, Insightful)
Sell now and make money while the market for it is still good. If there is a bust everyone would wish they had sold, new investors can bear the risk. The tech is too new to have a proper valuation. People know companies will pay money for AI, how much? No one knows, some companies have canceled their AI budgets because they were going through too much spend.
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Smaller companies and private users may go with locally run models. They are worse (allegedly 8 months behind the comparatively big proprietary models) but may be enough. E.g. you can run Chinese Qwen3.6 27B at home on a old gaming VGA with 16GiB of VRAM at about 22 tokens/second and context up to around 66 000 tokens.
This option to run locally will limit the maximum amount AI companies can charge. The maximum price is also limited by the amount of value AI adds to the users. It is not clear yet how much i
Paging R Sliver Gin (Score:1)