Inside Anthropic’s S-1, SpaceX Soars, Why VCs Are Ditching Seed Funds
Jason and Lon talk with DA Wallach, Dave McClure and Ben Black about Anthropic's S-1 filing, how to judge an AI lab's finances, compute spending, and whether AI will favor small seed funds over big funds and SPVs.
The gist
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Anthropic's S-1 shows $16.3 billion in first-half revenue, up 14x, and an $80.7 billion net loss, of which $72.4 billion was a non-cash charge.
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McClure used Ticker Trends to show Anthropic's run rate flat at $76.8 billion and says it is worth about $1.5 trillion, not $2 trillion or more.
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Wallach notes customers spend about 0.1% of operating costs on AI, while Black points to Anthropic's 900% net revenue retention as unmatched.
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Black says momentum is everything: Canva's secondary price fell roughly 25% after reports its growth slowed from 35% to 20%.
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Wallach argues AI makes startups so cheap that small funds writing small checks will profit most, and Jason predicts capital-efficient founders will skip funding rounds.
This Week in Startups uses it
"So this is tickertrends.com. They do a pretty decent job of tracking both, you know, this is Anthropic revenue, this is OpenAI revenue."
▶ Play at 4:45What they recommend · 1 pick
Ticker Trends
Finance & investing
"So this is tickertrends.com. They do a pretty decent job of tracking both, you know, this is Anthropic revenue, this is OpenAI revenue."
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