Is it right that they raise $3.5B, projected to burn $3.0B this year with ~$1.2B in revenue _expected_ this year?
So either prices are going to rocket up at some point and/or massive efficiencies? That doesn’t seem like a good position. I like their models, but not sure how they’ll survive long term.
When a large number of super smart people with a strong track record of accomplishment do things that don't make sense to me, my first thought isn't that they obviously don't know what they're doing, my first thought is that there might be something I don't understand.
I think many people believe this is an absolute bubble, that these valuations do not correspond to fundamental values of the business and are just based on promises and fraud.
I don't like having such a black and white view of the world though, so I would be interested in seeing if there is any sane reason for these valuations. Do you think these businesses would be as highly-valued if there was not all this hype around? How would you justify this valuation?
LLMs are amazing and probably as important a technology as electricity, the internal combustion engine, radio, or smartphones, but $61.5 billion can still be waaaay overvalued for Anthropic.
One possibility is diversification. By and large each successive tech iteration resulted in one big winner: Microsoft (operating systems), Amazon (e-commerce), Google (search), Apple (mobile), Meta (social networks), Netflix (streaming), and depending how you look at it, Tesla (EVs). If you invested in one of these companies early, you'd see a huge profit one or two decades later. The problem, of course, is that you don't have a crystal ball. However, if you invested in these companies and a few of their peers in the early days, then you lost all the money in their peers, made a lot of money in these companies, and you are still well ahead in the game.
At this point, if you don't know if Anthropic or OpenAI or Mistral will be the ultimate winner, you invest in all of them. Of course, there's a chance that another startup comes out of nowhere and all your investments tank, but nothing is risk free in life.
Of course, as a start-up you base your valuation on potential in the future, which should be well calculated based on how capable your employees are, how innovative your product is and what are the expected earnings.
Do you think Anthropic is still a startup? That's an honest question, Wikipedia certainly seems to think so, (Anthropic PBC is an American artificial intelligence public-benefit startup founded in 2021.). I would typically say that once you have 61B valuation, you have to have a fundamentally sound business, and thus cease to be a startup, but I don't know where the line is drawn.
Yes. The investors here are making a bet that AI goes supermassive and brings in a load of money.
Some people at anthropic almost certainly do think they're going to be successful. I suspect that at least some of them are engaging in salesmanship at a level that makes it fraud.
Readit News
So either prices are going to rocket up at some point and/or massive efficiencies? That doesn’t seem like a good position. I like their models, but not sure how they’ll survive long term.
Like all the crypto?
True, but when your only moat is capabilities, and those degrade with time and use, it might as well be.
I don't like having such a black and white view of the world though, so I would be interested in seeing if there is any sane reason for these valuations. Do you think these businesses would be as highly-valued if there was not all this hype around? How would you justify this valuation?
The authors of "The internet is just a fad"?
At this point, if you don't know if Anthropic or OpenAI or Mistral will be the ultimate winner, you invest in all of them. Of course, there's a chance that another startup comes out of nowhere and all your investments tank, but nothing is risk free in life.
People can't seem to distinguish between promises, bets, and fraud.
Do you think Anthropic is still a startup? That's an honest question, Wikipedia certainly seems to think so, (Anthropic PBC is an American artificial intelligence public-benefit startup founded in 2021.). I would typically say that once you have 61B valuation, you have to have a fundamentally sound business, and thus cease to be a startup, but I don't know where the line is drawn.
Some people at anthropic almost certainly do think they're going to be successful. I suspect that at least some of them are engaging in salesmanship at a level that makes it fraud.