[rconti]

So they're not just racing to gain dominance in AI, they're also racing to IPO before the music stops?

IPOing and getting a bunch of cash, even if your stock subsequently suffers in the crash, is a lot better than being unable to get that capital infusion before the house of cards collapses.

[aurareturn]

I don't think OpenAI or Anthropic are predicting that the AI market is going to collapse. In fact, I think both are bullish that the public still isn't pricing in exponential growth.

I think what is happening is that OpenAI is racing to IPO before Anthropic because their growth isn't as impressive. If you are the weaker company, you should IPO first to lock up the cash.

[bunderbunder]

I can’t imagine them actually being bullish about exponential growth, when both seem instead to be stagnating. I’m more inclined to believe they’re just maintaining a level of hype in public because that’s what you do.

[JumpCrisscross]

> when both seem instead to be stagnating

What's the evidence for Anthropic stagnating?

[bunderbunder]

They’ve claimed a big revenue run rate for this quarter. But it’s non-GAAP, so you kind of have to assume shenanigans. Earlier this year they were telling a court their revenue was like 1/4 of what they had told the public. I consider the number they came up with when they had to worry about committing perjury to be more trustworthy (because I’m a pill), so that would also indicate shenanigans. My guess is they are inflating that revenue run rate figure by booking token pre-payments from enterprise contracts now instead of spreading it over time as GAAP would mandate. And at the same time their big enterprise clients are talking about scaling back their usage.

So we’ve got a combination of signs that they’ve been inflating their revenue growth, and signs that their customers are losing their appetite for contributing to that revenue growth. I suppose it’s not a slam dunk, but it feels to me like as strong an indicator as one could hope for a private blitzscaler startup like this.

[JumpCrisscross]

Oh, to be clear, I'm not saying there is evidence they're all a-okay. I just hadn't seen any evidence that they were stalling out. (I have for OpenAI.)

[aurareturn]

  Earlier this year they were telling a court their revenue was like 1/4 of what they had told the public.

Got a source?

[dbu21]

"Although the company has generated substantial revenue since entering the commercial market—exceeding $5 billion to date—it has nonetheless had to raise more than $60 billion in outside capital to fund its operations".

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...

[Eufrat]

The same evidence that they are growing. Tea leaves.

[MagicMoonlight]

No new models. Same janky slop but with a bunch of RL and benchmark cheating. A pretend future model which is just the current model but with a longer COT and gated away.

[MagicMoonlight]

If you thought your company was going to develop AGI you wouldn’t sell a single share. You’d be a fool. It’s like selling your straight flush.

[sinuhe69]

The AI market might not collapse but the stock market could! Even if the AI companies only need to downgrade their investments and a healthy correction is underway, a fire sale of AI-related stocks will bring the stock market to its knees.

[zuzululu]

I don't really see this happening in the way that most people are envisioning. It's clear that Anthropic and OpenAI have found product market fit. They've gotten companies hooked and personally I cannot go back to the old way of coding.

However, I do see a bit of reduced demand for hardware and datacenters which could reprice these companies to more sane multiples. There will be winners and losers.

[c1sc0]

But will you need overpriced Codex and Claude? Most business code is crappy SaaS and glorified CRUD apps & I can build those with Sonnet / DeepSeek just fine …

[rconti]

Have you noticed that some % of devs are totally sold on AI, and others less so? I use it all the time, and I'd say my use is declining now after a fair bit of disillusionment.

It's not hard to imagine a world in which:

* Companies realize they're spending too much on AI, and cut back

* AI companies start raising prices

* Companies cut back on AI usage even more to compensate for the higher prices

* Some individual users use less AI, while others continue to increase their usage

The projected figures rely on EVERYTHING continuing to go up, which it doesn't seem to be.

[Avicebron]

What are they offering the public (not me and you writing code in our free time)?

[aurareturn]

They are offering the public an opportunity to become shareholders and they are giving their investors and employees liquidity.

[Avicebron]

I mean as a long-term product, not as a offer to join a hype cycle.

[aurareturn]

Automating a large portion of existing white collar work, accelerating scientific discoveries, brain for robotics, etc. These are compelling offers.

[Avicebron]

Sure, how does that benefit the public?

[crthpl]

where the heck are you seeing OpenAI racing to IPO before anthropic?

[bickfordb]

The only reason I can think of for the accelerated S&P 500 inclusion of SpaceX is a pump and dump

[JumpCrisscross]

> the accelerated S&P 500 inclusion of SpaceX

To be clear, S&P hasn't announced a decision on this yet.

[jackyinger]

Perhaps they’re afraid announcement would trigger divestment

[willis936]

I can assure you they are already seeing divestment in preparation.

[LostMyLogin]

I imagine the vast majority don’t care. All they care about is trying to hit their 401k or Roth IRA contributions for the month.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Perhaps they’re afraid announcement would trigger divestment

S&P don't get a choice around whether they announce their methodology or not.

That said, the rule change at the NASDAQ 100 doesn't seem to have impacted pricing or allocation. I can't imagine that many people are that concerned about this. (I posted the public-comment request from S&P to HN [1]. The response was crickets.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054324

[rconti]

Just yesterday I asked my advisor about exposure to these IPOs.

I don't mind having a small bit of exposure to them, I just don't want the outsized share they seem to be trying to take for everyone.

[dangus]

I'm not sure how long we can continue being negative about these AI companies. This idea that there will be a crash has often burned the bears in a way that has become an Internet meme.

In reality, corporations as a whole are seeing record profits continuing through 2026. Whether or not the average person is doing well is pretty irrelevant to the stock market: if companies are increasingly profitable, stocks go up.

Everything I hear about Anthropic points to a company that is actually closer to profitability and possibly already profitable, unlike many of its other peers.

We don't really look at YouTube as a failure and that product was unprofitable for many years. Nobody thinks the Uber bubble is going to burst even though it has never made back its investment money.

I think OpenAI is undisciplined and poorly run hence the insane burning of cash. Sam Altman is a terrible CEO and a conman. Anthropic is run by legit people.

Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta face essentially no negative consequence for burning cash. They have no urgent need to be efficient about their AI investments, even if they could be.

SpaceX is of course not profitable and has a lot of baggage but they still have a major asset, which is that Starlink prints utility company levels of money and is expanding both customer base and profit margins rapidly. Are they overvalued? Yeah, of course.

[Avicebron]

Better for whom?

[SecretDreams]

The company. Worse for the investors. It's a classic bagholder play, but it can give the companies a comfortable runway post IPO.

Typically, you IPO when your private funding is drying up and/or some of your early lenders want to cash out.

[JumpCrisscross]

> The company. Worse for the investors

It's worse for the new investors. (If it crashes.) It's great for the old investors. They got an opportunity to sell if they wanted. If they didn't, they still own their shares, except in a company that has that IPO cash sitting in its account.

[SecretDreams]

Yes, correct. Although, even for some company folks, if it crashes, they get burned since they typically have blackouts post IPO.

Of course, some special souls are excluded from blackouts lol.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if it crashes, they get burned since they typically have blackouts post IPO

In the alternate timeline they would have held shares in a private company. They're still not really getting burned other than getting a tax bill.

[paulpauper]

People keep predicting "house of cards" and keep being wrong. AI bubble was supposed to burst as far back as 2023. When was the last time since 2009 there was a $500+ billion tech valuation that lost 90% or more? After a certain point , 100% market penetration is achieved and these products become mainstream and profitability follows. See Uber and Tesla for examples.

[bunderbunder]

The old saying goes, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

I’m not necessarily expecting a crash any time soon. (But we average a major correction, what? every 8 years? So if you keep predicting one long enough you will eventually have been right all along.) But I do feel comfortable saying OpenAI and Anthropic are overpriced. For more or less the same reason Cisco was overpriced in the late ‘90s. It’s not that what they were making wasn’t valuable; it’s that we got out over our skis a bit over how much of it the world could actually manage to consume in the immediate future.

[lmm]

> After a certain point , 100% market penetration is achieved and these products become mainstream and profitability follows. See Uber and Tesla for examples.

Groupon got to pretty much 100% penetration, still crashed and burned right after IPO. I think Zynga followed a similar trajectory.

[hungryhobbit]

Read history: people always think everything is fine ... until it isn't.

[Karrot_Kream]

This is one of those arguments that is so vacuous you can apply it to anything and always be right.

> "There's no way you'll hurt yourself walking to the living room"

> "Read history: people always think everything is fine ... until it isn't."

[olalonde]

And people are right most of the time. For every actual bubble, there are easily a dozen "bubbles" that aren't in fact bubbles.

[JumpCrisscross]

> people always think everything is fine ... until it isn't

History is also replete with people constantly predicting collapses that don't come. Timing the market is very hard with numbers, it's total nonsense if one is just going off vibes.

[za_creature]

Most bank runs tend to be driven by vibes, not numbers though.

The good news is that these folks seem to be in possession of a vibe-rator.

[JumpCrisscross]

> bank runs

Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI are not banks. (Also, we had the largest bank runs in American history three years ago. The ordinary American barely noticed.)

[za_creature]

They're not profitable either, so the money has to come from somewhere, no?

[aurareturn]

Nasdaq is 5.4x higher now than peak dotcom.

So just buy the dip if it actually crashes.

[AlexCoventry]

The headwinds are way worse now, though. Oil is choked, war is brewing, and corruption is at an all-time high.

[materiallie]

Why did you reference "since 2009" like it was an eternity ago, when it's actually the most recent business cycle?

[fnordpiglet]

If note the dotcom boom lasted from about 1995 until 2000. Housing bubble longer. Theres no time table on when the bubble bursts, and the web didn’t die and neither did housing when the burst happened. It is just a reset and consolidation of overtly excessive speculation. It’s not like the bust leads to an end of civilization.

[lelanthran]

> People keep predicting "house of cards" and keep being wrong. AI bubble was supposed to burst as far back as 2023.

The bubble can't pop until after an IPO, and that doesn't mean "immediately after".

You can't have a run on a privately held company.

[Npovview]

US markets will keep superpositiong S-curves upon S-curves upon S-curves. Just as Elon Musk does with his companies. Just ask Tesla/SpaceX bulls.

[_fizz_buzz_]

In 2004 people were predicting that the real estate bubble would burst and then nothing happened. Until it did.