Instinct Worth 30BN? | Microsoft Cuts 27,000 Jobs While Meta Taps Equity Markets for $95B CapEx
Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll break down Anthropic's S-1, Microsoft's mass buyout offer, Meta's equity raise, data risks in Chinese open models, and whether Instinct is worth $30 billion.
The gist
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Rory O'Driscoll calls Anthropic's S-1, with $16.3 billion first-half revenue, strong, though 80% of revenue comes from models under six months old.
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Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 of 223,000 staff; Lemkin calls it a scarlet letter, and O'Driscoll expects AI depreciation costs to force headcount cuts.
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O'Driscoll says big tech is shifting AI funding from debt to stock, citing Meta's raise of up to $95 billion after going free cash flow negative.
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Lemkin says Qwen was caught sending data to Alibaba servers roughly once per 100,000 calls, and expects Chinese open-weight models to fade in the US.
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In a mock investment committee, Stebbings backs Instinct at $30 billion, while Lemkin wants 100 days of traction and pitches OpenAI at $1.25 trillion.
Also mentioned
10:15
QQQ
· "If you're listing on Nasdaq, which I think it is, I didn't check, you go into the QQQ index, but the S&P..."
14:54
Office Space
· "Have you seen Office Space? Like it's not more humane to meet with someone in HR and get fired."
22:00
DeepSeek
· "Speaking of China being on fire, DeepSeek raises about 15 billion dollars, largest ever private Chinese..."
22:46
Cohere
· "Cohere is now a fourth-tier LLM, right? Fourth-tier player that has only sovereignty on its side as near as..."
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