Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) work will contribute to massive changes in the U.S. economy and workforce, but how much is the leading AI lab really worth as a public company?
Reuters, citing several people familiar with the matter, reported that current and potential Anthropic IPO investors, who attended an investor day at Anthropic’s San Francisco headquarters this week, discussed a valuation of the Claude maker at around $1.5 trillion, down from previous expectations of $2 trillion.
“What is $500 billion among friends in the AI business?” Yahoo Finance’s Jake Conley joked (video above) before adding: “It gets to the point where you’re trying to justify these huge valuations: Do your numbers justify it?
Anthropic’s third-quarter revenue reportedly increased 45% from the second quarter, to $16.8 billion, and the company remained profitable on an adjusted basis. Reuters, which got its hands on Anthropic’s IPO prospectus, previously reported that revenue more than doubled in the second quarter, from $4.7 billion to $11.6 billion.
“Although these figures allayed some concerns about the massive costs of developing AI systems,” Reuters reported, “some investors were disappointed by the slowdown in the sequential growth rate over the most recent quarter.”
Read more: Nvidia launches AI security platform after Jensen Huang calls Anthropic and OpenAI warnings ‘strange’
Yahoo Finance co-host Julie Hyman called the price drop a “reading moment in the room” with AI stock selling off this week. “All of this seems to indicate that there are at least enough concerns that you’re not going to try to overestimate.”
Hyman also noted that one quarter might not fix the problem: “We don’t know if it’s going to reaccelerate in the fourth quarter.”
Conley wants a different metric than annual recurring revenue (ARR), the recurring number AI companies like to quote.
“ARR, that’s not a real number,” he said. “Give me some GAAP numbers.”
In-house AI tools helped analyze interview transcripts, research, and write this article. Humans reviewed, edited and fact-checked the material before publication.
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