Anthropic IPO Raises Market Liquidity, Hyperscaler Questions into Blockbuster Debut

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Let's see what happens here. Let's get the details from our panel. David Shapiro is with me, co-founder and CEO of OpenVC, and Evan Schloassman, principal at NeoSteller. Great to see you both. So David, let's start with you. You were last here for the SpaceX IPO, and what kind of demand do you expect for this name?

David Shapiro (0:21)

Well, I think it's gonna be really interesting to see whether demand will follow a similar pattern to SpaceX.

As the SpaceX IPO proved, the market can support these somewhat mega IPO, 75 billion in the case of SpaceX, about 100 billion rumored in the case of Anthropic. The question is going to be what that does to volatility. For context, we're pricing it right now according to the New York Stock Exchange Unicorn Index at about a $1.5 trillion valuation. Are investors in the secondary market gonna buy into that $2 trillion ultimate IPO price or not? Will remain to be seen.

SPEAKER_1 (0:51)

What do you think here, Evan? What are your thoughts as you think about the big picture and the demand that we may see for Anthropic?

Evan Schloassman (0:59)

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we've seen in the private markets fairly robust demand for leading names such as Anthropic, AI, others that are sort of driving change, especially on the larger front from private companies. So when we look at, I think David was right, some of these larger valuations, I think there were initials and questions about whether the market can sustain to a larger capital raises. I think we saw proof that it can if you look at SpaceX IPO. We also saw on the private side, over $100 billion being raised by OpenAI, them coming back out for another capital raise. So we've seen time and time again, the market's been able to sustain raises for these large market leading companies. I think if you look at the fundamentals driving behind OpenAI, if you look at the OpenAI and Anthropic, the entire industry, the fundamental growth, those companies are Anthropic. You look at an order of magnitude increase over the last year on a revenue that has been reported may approach from an ARR standpoint, $100 billion.

It's a pretty unique in the true sense of the word. There are very few of those companies that could be approaching those type of growth profiles.

SPEAKER_1 (2:04)

In your notes, you wrote about the investor enthusiasm overall for AI companies saying the Anthropic IPO would give the investors a new way to participate directly into AI.

It shows that there is an appetite for this. I think about the timing of this folks, because the S1 was filed in June where you have some investor meetings now in October. Reportedly, we are going to really see this IPO in November, maybe after the midterms but before Thanksgiving. What do you think about the timing in the market environment here, David?

David Shapiro (2:39)

I think the timing is quite interesting, especially as you saw a bit of a new cycle around AI safety concerns and what that was going to do to some of these mega IPOs. Interestingly, we saw that after OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic made some recent noise about AI incidents, their prices actually went up in the secondary market. Investors looking at these names ahead of an IPO are probably thinking that concerns are certainly warranted but that really the fundamental value of the companies are still there. As Evan was implying, Anthropic's run rate revenue approaching nearly 100 billion this year, up from 9 billion last year is a pretty astounding statistic.

SPEAKER_1 (3:16)

Premiums to what we could see. Do you think that's a big possibility Evan or is it too hard to say? Because we have seen, I mean, well, let's look at the SpaceX IPO, for example, right? We had a 135 that went up to 225, it went as low as 104, it's at 167, higher than the IPO price. Do you think that we may see as the mega IPOs come in, OpenAI now has been pushed back, so you don't have those folks worrying now. They can put maybe give more to Anthropic. I don't know, you tell us.

Evan Schloassman (3:49)

I think the way I would look at this IPO, and really similar to other cycles we've seen before, is I would look for the bankers to price and position this IPO in a way that they're looking for it to perform well.

So when you think about Anthropic's IPO, an IPO of this sort of scale and magnitude, the market is really looking for this to perform well, in order to open up and sort of broaden the IPO market at large. And so I would expect the bankers to go to the market and to structure this IPO and the coherence vesting in it in a way that they are looking for a proper, well performing sort of IPO stock.