There is a lot of value from LLMs but it is something that I can switch easily. Yes, some frontier models are much better but users can still chose to use cheaper models for most of the work. In fact most applications, through which people will interact with LLMs anyway, will not need frontier models unless they offer "chat with AI". Anything that solves specific problems (even multiple problems) does not need frontier LLMs.

Anthropic and OpenAI will have to become more of the end user application stack. Files, calendars, emails, photos, and much more have to pass through them for them to keep making money. Else they cannot make money like the way they have been in this early era of LLMs.

a big move into end-user software would mean that they have to compete heavily with their own largest customers. The economics of offering SaaS are also under meaningful pressure and don't warrant anywhere near the valuation that is being suggested

End-user software is going to be under a lot of pressure. If you're Microsoft, Apple, or Google: you can easily copy products or integrate ideas into your platform. I see companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and Oracle having to downsize significantly to stay profitable. Having said that, my in-laws still pay for an AOL email so I don't think their cashflow is going to zero soon.

True. We will end up getting more Google alternatives. Nothing beyond that for now at least.

This is the same argument we have heard many times with SaaS that would presumably get replaced by open source equivalents. In practice it does not happen because there is a lot of value in having someone else deal with a problem.

It feels like people are still trying to bet on the horse that will achieve gAI.

I'm fascinated by exactly how an investment in the company that first reaches AGI (or whatever we decide to call it) might pay off... It feels like the stocks would absolutely be worth owning in the immediate term because they'd be hot property at the point where people realise it's happening.

The thing that I'm less clear on is, if and when they achieve some kind of recursive improvement exponential growth thingy, isn't that going to heavily disrupt the entire economy / stock market? In that environment, would Anthropic's stocks really be a good bet, given they have to operate within the economy?

The economics of this are absurd, and Anthropic hasn't been without their controversy; but I use Claude everyday, and they've made tremendous impact on society. I wish them the best for their IPO.

„The IPO process begins with a roadshow starting on November 10th (EST). Subject to regulatory clearance, the final IPO share price is expected to be set on November 18th (EST), and shares are expected to begin publicly trading on November 19th (EST).“

So if share price is only set one day before trading, I guess you just have that day to decide to buy if you can get allocation from your broker? I'd like to try it but I've never bought an IPO before.

I just 'bought' some through ing-diba, you can set a limit.

I have tried a couple of IPOs

You indicate your interest. Also start funding the account. So you fund 7000 for 100 shares at 70. Then they announce the price is 75. You must change the order to fit the funds or have extra money. Of course you can opt out or change the quantity anyways. But I think in both the cases I actually went ahead (Reddit and figma), I had to reconfirm the quantity. You can't be away from the network.

You commit to your broker before, if you're big enough of a player. They'll mostly have allocated to their biggest clients and such.

Pretty hard to get in on a hot IPO, though, as the shares will go to their favorite clients (those with the most money).

I got lucky in the Reddit ipo. I had decent karma so I got invited for their special insider track. But I had to create a new account via a link shared by Reddit. Got what I asked for.

But otherwise yes it goes as described above.

I think your decision to buy would be already taken at that point.

"You don't need a broker. Use some other broker."

I would wait for 2-3 quarters before investing, it will drop and there will likely be lock-ins to contend with. if growth slows then price could tumble fast.

So I should short it?

To profit from shorting it you need to not just be right that it is going to go down, but be able to tolerate the volatility in the interim.

If you have to ask, then you shouldn’t short it.

Right. I was trying to emphasize that no one knows what the stock price will do.

If you view that as an investment then no. If you view it as a minor flutter then maybe. You might believe that Team X will win the next game (maybe at a 60% chance) but unless you're a degenerate gambler you wouldn't bet heavily on that outcome.

As the late Charlie Munger said about Tesla: I wouldn't own it, I wouldn't short it.

Apparently not every country can participate in this IPO. As of now, if you open the Revolut Anthropic IPO page from Poland, you get:

> Linked page(s) related to Anthropic IPO can only be viewed by persons located in UK, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.

The UK page is effectively empty and just links to https://app.retailbook.com/offers/anthropic-ipo

And you then have to agree to not share anything in it with anyone outside the UK, including:

> I will not transmit or otherwise send any of the information to which this gateway gives access to any person outside the United Kingdom.

It's extremely hard with modern browsers to ensure that doesn't happen!

Poles apart.

"We have only bits and pieces of information, but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century, all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI."

The Second Renaissance was great. I’ve heard a lot of scifi computers speak but the deadpan delivery of humanity’s end in detail always kind of haunted me.

Dario will re-invest the profit to solve conflict mineral issues all over the world! /j

There is a heavy amount of circular investments in the industry, it takes often the shape of investments from their peer companies/competitors. There is a private placement that is made in parallel with the public offering, through $26B of a special stock, according to the S1. They all have a lot to gain from a successful Anthropic public issue. The problem is it blurs the signal, we don't how much is overvaluation that contributes to a bubble.

I don't think there has often been such an intertwined industry before. Usually cartels are made through discreet partnerships at the operational level, this is an interconnection in the background at the financial one.

With SpaceX, now Anthropic, and soon OpenAI, we're seeing 3 of the largest IPOs ever. Will existing institutional investors trim other positions to allocate a lot of capital for these mega listings or is this not a concern?

I wouldn't worry too much about OpenAI; they seen to gave deferred their IPO until 'sometime in 2027'. At this point they're basically at the mercy of Anthropic, since if the Anthropic IPO goes poorly or gets pulled then it's going to look to investors (and everyone else, frankly) like OAI will be dead on arrival, too.

Fun times ahead, for sure.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the projected IPO of the big AI player. But part of me wonder if, in some ways like what happen with SpaceX, it will end up being a nothingburger. A first few crazy days on the market, then whatever, the company is just public now. And with how shares and voting power are attributed, it seems like, just like for spacex, it won't risk changing the power structure of the company.

worst day ever

maybe a leather jacket next time

Is the chart available as an image?

Presumably this'll be like the spacex one - high price, instant drop and a load of amateur investors wondering why they just lost a ton of money.

All I can see is that the Petri dish on their letter shows uneven colony distribution, someone needs to work on their plating technique!

Here comes the new qwen model announcement.

I’m very skeptical.

Deepseek and other Chinese models are close enough for most typical use cases.

This could seriously wreck our entire economy, so much of the stock market is propped up by AI hype.

Anyway, expect a massive government bailout for Anthropic and Open AI when the Chinese models prove to be more cost efficient.

Might not be next year, or even this decade, but it’s coming.

PS: A fear mongering campaign is already underway, Deepseek is going to give you communist code completion!

Quoting a tweet I saw yesterday but..

Biopharma CEO "This presentation contains forward-looking statements, as a result of risks and uncertainties..."

AI/Tech CEO "We will cure all diseases in less than 10 years"

Like look I get it, this is truly impressive tech, but can we at least be a little more sober?

Will this, together with Jensen’s affairs, finally pop the AI bubble?

Plausibly part of the chain of events, unlikely to be a cause in itself. Nothing pops because of an underperforming IPO.

Though Anthropic's IPO flopping might affect the valuation of OpenAI, which further inhibits their ability to raise additional funds (which they're already been struggling with). Given the incestuous financing in AI any major actor in the AI space defaulting could bring a lot of companies with it.

As a side note, regardless of outcome, Anthropic IPO:ing is the first step in the inexorable march toward profit maximization and enshittification. You all better be ready with your verification cans.

We can only hope.

Only if issued stock is met with very low demand. Otherwise, we need to wait for OpenAI IPO or Oracle/CoreWeave going under.

$23 billion quarterly net loss.

Hundreds of billions in future liabilities.

IPO valuation above $1 trillion.

The lunatics are running the asylum.

To be fair, that loss includes over $20b from instruments like convertible notes. They're not equity, so the increase in their value has to be reported as a loss. But in the context of this IPO, they will behave like equity, and just turn into stock. That's not money anthropic will pay, it will just dilute investors during IPO.

Reporting an increase in the value of the company as a loss is weird, but they have to do it. this is a case where adjusted earnings give a better idea of how the business is going.

And buying too!

As the page says, almost 22bn of that is a book loss due to share price increase.

So their loss is actually small compared to revenue.

I unironically believe that bitcoin -- and, downstream, the memestock -- have everything to do with this.

Old-school fundamentals are laughed at or handwaved away. FOMO rules the day. "If Anthropic is the first to AGI, it'll take over every industry and go to the moon!"

Nobody is buying these companies because they believe that the company is valuable. They are buying these stocks because they believe that the stock may be more valuable tomorrow than it is today. Whatever the company behind the stock does or does not do, really doesn't matter. AI glitters like gold today.

Yet to be seen if it tarnishes.

Sure, and if it isn’t, investors just flushed a freight train loaded with dollar bills down the world’s largest toilet.

the question is: who will rise in the ashes of the bust, in a world of abundant compute availability and an upgraded power system?

It's going to skyrocket. :DDD

What the hell is 15% adjusted margin? Lots of mathmagic there I guess...

The real number with standard accounting rules is a loss of $567 million (-3% operating margin). But they're adding in "Stock-based compensation expense" (~$1B) and "Non-cash charitable contributions" (~$2B), and they end up with a profit of $2.5 billion.

Enshittification coming soon

Let the enshittification begin

What is super odd about this is no-one expects Anthropic to prioritizes shareholders.

Absolutely.

So what's the best primer we can share for getting started with local llms?

This. It will be very interesting to see how plans are going to change and how quickly. Maybe they won't and they'll stay relatively affordable. We'll see.

> Let the enshittification begin

But is there a solution to this though?

How does one stop 'enshittification' of everything exactly?

I'm not talking just about Anthropic.

One thing Doctorow suggests is to remove anti-circumvention, thus allowing adversarial interoperability.

Competition Enforcement

Strong privacy laws

Tech unionization

Mandated data portability.

Competition is important, but the way you fix that is by fixing the terms of copyright and patents.

Intellectual property, at it's simplest, is a government mandated monopoly granted to allow for progress in the sciences and "useful arts" (think trades really, not arts and crafts). All monopolies are bad, but it was only to be granted for a limited time so it was fine.

Corrupt politicians ruined the entire trade off though, and now it seems that copyrights and patents last for 100 years plus the life of the universe. During which time no one can really compete fairly.

If we want rapid progress in science, we want short patents. Instead we opted for long patents and a higher stock price. R&D budgets have been shrinking ever since.

Has these successfully combatted against enshittification entirely?

Which places has this been successful?

What are you talking about, these haven't even been tried because the corporate lobbyists know they work..

Opus 5.5 has been terrible for me for the last week - so seems like they got the memo.

Luckily switching is super easy so I'm now back to codex (and hopefully carbon soon)

It already enshitificated from the very begin

"public benefit corporation" lol yeah yeah

This is a legal designation that means very little in concrete terms, and in particular, courts have held that “the public” does NOT have standing to sue a public benefit corporation to enforce that it’s actually working for the public benefit.

What an interesting flood of negative comments with nothing to say. This company has completely changed my career.

If AI went away tomorrow I would find a new line of work because artisanally handcrafting code is the most boring use of my time in the entire world.

Welcome to HN - the land of the miserable

This page is specifically to register for the UK retail offering of shares. I don't imagine that'll stop people who haven't clicked through posting off topic nonsense.

The submitted URL is https://ipo.anthropic.com/us/ . I was redirected to /eu/ ("Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden").

I was redirected to https://ipo.anthropic.com/au/ for the Australian offering

It seems to be geo-located. I get German retail offerings.

The URL says `/us`. And it calls it a "roadshow", which is the term when the company and the supporting bank goes around to investors to pitch their offering.

Ohh boo hoo rich entitled programmers hate the fact that the company makes your lives hard. Sorry I would feel sorry for you but I just can't reach.

After having that ambition thwarted for over 26 years and working like a slave counting other people's money {a career I hate every day} your collective despair gives my schadenfreude a delicious unending orgasmic thrill. You need literally no idea.

Just remember: no dreams never work out and work by definition is something you hate every day until you die.