Inside Oura’s IPO Postpone, Anthropic’s AI Discount Cuts, Anthropic Launches Claude Sonnet 5.5

Akash Pasricha (0:13)

Welcome, everyone, to The Information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Tuesday, September 29th. We are tracking President Trump's meeting with top tech execs in Washington today. AI safety is likely to be on the agenda. We will have more coverage for you on our website. Today on the show, Oura is postponing its IPO, citing market conditions. We will talk about the conversations that could be happening among perspective investors behind the scenes. We are also breaking down AMD's World Labs acquisition for $8.2 billion.

We also have exclusive reporting for you around Anthropic's more aggressive stance on pricing. We are going to end the show with a conversation with two separate founders, the co-founder of Vals AI, an AI benchmarking company, and the co-founder of Kayak who is now starting another company. Lola is an AI travel booking assistant. It's going to be a fun show, so let's get right on into it.

Oura announced it is postponing its IPO, which was set for Wednesday. The company says there was strong demand but cited uncertainty in the IPO market. I want to bring on the Information's co-executive editor, Martin Peers, who published a column on the questions facing the company's IPO over the weekend. Martin, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here.

Martin Peers (1:33)

Akash, how are you?

Akash Pasricha (1:35)

I'm good. Look, you wrote one column and they called it off.

You broke it.

Martin Peers (1:40)

I would love to take credit for this, but unfortunately, I don't think I can.

Akash Pasricha (1:46)

All you did is reflect the questions that people might have about this IPO. So walk us through.

Martin Peers (1:55)

Akash, I don't think, I honestly think that this hasn't got anything to do with Oura as much as we would like to think it has. This is at least the third or fourth company to have delayed its IPO in the last week. All of them have cited the uncertain market demand. The other companies are mostly outside of tech, but they include this metals company called Amira. I think it's pronounced. There's a Holtek Nuclear Energy. Now you've got Oura. We don't really know about SB Energy, which is the Softbank-backed energy company that was trying to develop or wants to develop data centers. They had filed to go public on September 1st, but their paperwork is not advanced.

I think there's, as I said, probably at least three or four companies in this position, and I really don't think it's the companies. I think it is the overall market.

Holtek, when it announced it was delaying its IPO, it laid out a whole series of issues, and they relate to the war in the Middle East, most obviously rising interest rates. I mean, you've got right now, you've got the long bond yield is hitting levels that hasn't hit since 2002 And that, as that increases, the value of stocks goes down. So this is really not an ideal time for companies to be going public.

Akash Pasricha (3:34)

So, I mean, I guess we don't know then how long it'll be before these companies...

Martin Peers (3:40)

No, but really the issue is what does this mean for Anthropic?

Akash Pasricha (3:44)

Right. Well, that was my next question.

Martin Peers (3:46)

Yes. That's the most important issue right now. Well, I had to delay because really, they're obviously trying to raise a huge... They're trying to raise a huge amount of money. There's a lot of uncertainty in the entire AI financing market that will affect their ability to grow.

You really couldn't blame them at this point, particularly as they're spending half of their time warning that AI, the product that they make, could kill all of us. You couldn't blame them if they said, maybe this is not the right time to go public. We should just wait a little while. So I think that that's something that we have to wait and see. Yeah.

Akash Pasricha (4:32)

So, I mean, this all makes sense because I have to tell you, you and I, when Oura's S1 came out, you and I both looked at it and, I mean, I want to ask-

Martin Peers (4:40)

Coming back to Oura.

Akash Pasricha (4:42)

You know, coming back to Oura, that's what the news is. Is that Oura?

Martin Peers (4:47)

Don't obsess about Oura.

Akash Pasricha (4:49)

I mean, people obsess about Oura a lot.

Martin Peers (4:52)

I don't think we should obsess that it's an Oura specific thing. I really think this is a, what is more, what is most interesting is that this is a market-wide issue.

Akash Pasricha (5:02)