Anthropic Files For An IPO: Rapid Reaction — With M.G. Siegler

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Love it when news breaks while we're recording. News just broke. Anthropic has filed to go public.

[00:00:05]>> Really? Today, Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on form S1 to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for proposed initial public offering of our common stock. So they have now it looks like they've jumped the gun on open AI to >> I was going to say so there was the report last week right that that uh and it was right ahead of uh SpaceX filing their S1. It seemed very not coincidental that OpenAI let it perhaps leak out that they would be filing soon.

[00:00:38]In one of the reports it suggested that it would be last Friday. As far as we know that didn't happen and or at least it never leaked out. Obviously they would file confidentially too. So either they filed and no one found out about it or Anthropic just pulled a quick one on them and got out ahead of them, which would be wild because we've talked about this before. If Open AI goes out, if Anthropic goes out before OpenAI does, OpenAI is in a lot of trouble from public listing perspective just because we even talked about this when it was still just the notion that they would have a better bottom line, right? like that they wouldn't be burning money for as long uh as OpenAI would and they would get to profitability quicker. Now the reports are that Anthropic has already turned in some in at least at some level perhaps dipped into profitability because of just the crazy growth that they're seeing. Um, and if they're now growing faster at the top line and have a higher valuation, uh, like this is going to be a narrative nightmare for OpenAI to go to try to also go public in. This almost reminds me of like the book publishing games where if you have a book that's somewhat similar to someone else's, uh, you might announce your publication date to sort of clear the deck, but they also might, you know, keep theirs secret until they're ready and, uh, I wouldn't be totally stunned if OpenAI has also filed and move in silence.

[00:02:11]>> And now they would have to, of course, put it out there. Don't worry, we filed on Friday. we're ahead of them by two days or whatever. The silly thing about this is of course like by filing, you know, this is is filing confidentially.

[00:02:21]You don't necessarily have to go out.

[00:02:23]You're just like you're basically putting the wheels in motion so that if you want to, you can have that optionality. And when I saw that leak last week about OpenAI doing that, I thought it was both for optics because obviously they they would take any any chance they can get against uh going after Elon, their their foil, um you know, to try to take some steal some momentum or just some buzz out of that out of those sales. Um but it also gives them the optionality to go out if they feel like they needed to against Anthropic. That doesn't necessarily means that they would. And I feel like Anthropic doing it now though puts so much pressure on them to actually have to do it because now they're going to just be afraid that if they don't go out, Anthropic could go out at any moment and then like again that's a big big problem for them.

[00:03:08]>> Yeah. Talk talk briefly again and then we'll we'll head out. Um why is it important for OpenAI to go before Anthropic? be so so much of this to your book publishing point is around the narratives and around drumming up uh investor interest in in these stocks and while SpaceX and Open AAI are interesting because obviously SpaceX has XAI now which is directly analogous in ways to to OpenAI's business they're very different businesses obviously OpenAI doesn't have a a rocket launching uh arm nor do they have Twitter uh for probably for better in that case um and so they don't have a lot of overlap and so there's there's going to be comps that are done like you know market comparables done uh between the two companies on their AI businesses but they're not direct anthropic and open AI would be much more viewed as direct obviously competitors um between the two now their businesses as we've been talking about are different in ways but as we've also spent a lot of this conversation about they're converging right because they have because open AI feels like they have to go after what Anthropic's been able to tap into with developers and yeah leaning into CL you know coding and and then eventually agentic work and so they are converging and the comps between anthropic and open AAI that we're seeing with this these most recent fundraises just increasingly do not look good for open AAI and so when public investors see that they are going to say okay we're going to invest in one of these or the other which one are we going to invest in previously when you said chat GBT was by far and away the leader in yeah like topline uh revenue and yeah they might like be behind in bottom line because they're spending so much on servers and and they want to grow into a bigger market opportunity than what Anthropic could do. That's the narrative they would have projected with that. But now the fact that again they're converging businesses and that Anthropic has sort of zoomed ahead on the top line too is a real real big problem. Now I would assume that OpenAI would try to counter by saying look we still have 900 million uh MAUs which is also slightly problematic because that number has not shifted in a while and clearly they've wanted it to shift above a billion so that they can announce that and it seems like to the IO point Sundar was on stage announcing that Gemini is also at 900 million MAU so that's not great but um still they would probably say look we have a lot more regular and consumer usage than what anthrop ropic has and so that's going to be our narrative. But I don't I again when you're when you're talking to and out there pitching investors and they're going to look for comps and those two are the you know the most direct comps to one another and one of them is just overtaken the other one and so unless in the next 6 months uh you know before they were to go out unless OpenAI has a way to zoom back ahead heavily relying or pushing codecs you would assume like that's going to be a big problem. Now, one other thing I would just add, this is highly controversial um you know, in the past like few months and it's playing out right now as as uh SpaceX gears up to go any any day now. Um there have been changes to the um indicy rules where apparently SpaceX when they when they list [snorts] are going to be included in maybe not the S&P 500 right away, but they're also trying to change the rules for inclusion into that so that they no longer have a holding period. And so what that means for um both OpenAI and Anthropic potentially is that they're big enough where all of them plus SpaceX would all go into these industries. And that just means that the bunch of uh different mutual funds and and all sorts of big funds automatically have to rebalance and buy into these. And so you can see a world in which maybe the comps and and all the numbers don't matter so much because these these basically these they're going to be included in these indices and these mutual funds are going to have to buy in in major ways regardless. And so maybe that's an argument for going out now I guess but again I'm trying to paint like the most like roundabout picture of how like how you can make an argument for open AI going out at the same time as anthropic.

[00:07:20]Maybe OpenAI just waits as a public company for longer, but would they they need to raise money still and so are they able to do that?

[00:07:29]>> Or maybe they do, right? That's sort of the one thing that sort of remains hanging for me is Anthropic just raised $65 billion. They announced it last week. I know, >> right? OpenAI just raised 122 billion.

[00:07:39]Is the burn that great that they have to go public to keep funding it? And remember, I I I don't know, you know, what's left after the public market, right, to in terms of fundraising? Well, they just have easier access to raise debt. Um, you know, if they're public and and they'll be able to use their stock sort of in a a more liquid way.

[00:07:57]Um, you know, and there's other more granular reasons that I'm not well versed enough in to know exactly why they would do it. I would imagine though at the highest level they're doing it because the window's open, right? Like, and if and when it changes, like they could be stuck if they don't go out when the window is open knowing that they need to continually be fundraising. Now, to your point of do they need to keep fundraising, I would say like yeah, Entropic seems like in a good spot um you know given that talk of profitability and whatnot, but remember they're also in a bit of a tricky spot which OpenAI has played up certainly in that they haven't had the capacity to meet the demand and so now they're striking these deals with SpaceX as we talked about and with other NeoClouds and those deals are not cheap and those cost billions and billions of dollars.

[00:08:39]what's the report that they're paying like $15 billion potentially a year to to SpaceX to lease uh the Colossus data center. And so like yeah, I mean you can burn a lot of your money that you just raised quickly if you're all of a sudden spending it right back to these neoclouds to uh to meet capacity. And so um you know I how that plays out, it's June now. Do they go out before the end of the year? I don't I mean there's so many variables in between now and then.

[00:09:07]I feel like I'm a broken record on this, like that a lot could change in between now and and the time that they would go out, but SpaceX is going to go public, you know, this week, the end of this week or early next. And so, um, or maybe the 11th, you know, at the latest or whatnot. And so, uh, they're going to be out there and they're going to test that that public appetite. And they're also going to test the fences of what we were just talking about with regard to these indices buying in and what that will look like. Like there's a world in which SpaceX's stock uh value market cap just zooms way past 2 trillion like in an instant because of of this automatic buying that happens which is wild.

[00:09:41]>> Definitely Anthropic made its announcement about the confidential filing to go public. Uh two paragraphs on his blog post did not pre-brief any news publications.

[00:09:51]So >> talk about a mic.

[00:09:53]>> Your move open AI your move.

[00:09:56]>> MG great to see you as always. Uh, always fun to talk about breaking news live. So, thank you again for coming on.

[00:10:02]>> Likewise. And you totally hit me with that blind, Alex. I didn't even get a post notification about it. So, wow.

[00:10:07]Okay.

[00:10:07]>> Oh, yeah. I had email in my inbox about 10 minutes ago. So, but it's good that we were able to address it. Y >> All right. Thanks again. Are you ready?