Is Anthropic's IPO In Trouble?

Beth Lyons (0:00)

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Welcome, welcome. Today is October 15th, 2026 It is episode 834 I am Beth Lyons. With me in the studio today is Andy Halliday. How you doing, Andy?

Andy Halliday (0:19)

I'm well today, thank you.

Beth Lyons (0:20)

Awesome. You are listening and or watching The Daily AI Show. We have Geoff and Brian in chat already. How you doing? Everything? Yes, Geoff, Thursday already. I also feel that way.

There's been a lot of anticipation about what might happen today, this Thursday, some potential drops. But we've got plenty to talk about even without the drops. We'll see. What's on your mind today, Andy?

Andy Halliday (0:50)

Well, two things. One is that there was a private investor presentation by Anthropic that got disseminated in effect, some of the details of it. Importantly, the revenue for the third quarter of this year ended up close to $17 billion for Anthropic.

That was enough for many commentators to say, OK, here's the positive bull case for AI valuations, because that justifies, approximately, justifies the $2 trillion expected valuation, enterprise value, for Claude, because they see the premium pricing that Anthropic is continuing to be able to assert as having some legs. And anyway, so you have a very positive result in the expressed financials, without any real dependence on changing the mechanics of what the current market space is. If it continues kind of as it's going, then that's good news. And that says it's not so much a bubble. Here's an example of a company that's focused on enterprise.

It worked diligently on improving its models and its harnesses and delivering something that's relatively sticky, as it is for me. Like I don't find my cost structure for Anthropic at my $20 a month payment. I don't find that to be a real impediment, and I would happily pay a lot more. So I think that that's all good news. Now at the same time, there are big risks that Anthropic has as we get closer and closer, just weeks away really, to their initial public offering.

Beth Lyons (2:53)

Because it's anticipated before Thanksgiving. Have they announced the date? That's just the way that I'm thinking of it.

Andy Halliday (3:00)

Yeah, it's expected. The phrasing I heard this morning was as early as November, which is still three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, six weeks away.

But that's weeks.

There are many other companies, including Ura, for example, that canceled their IPO in 2026, even though they were very close to announcing the actual pricing and date. Then they just said, no, the environment isn't conducive to doing an IPO right now. Why? Because there's so much consumer cost pressure that's in the environment and instability in the markets. Those are not the conditions you really want to throw your prospect of valuation into. Anyway, Anthropic, I think, and AI are distinctly different from the general marketplace, and so that could proceed. But now, here's one of the major risks that Anthropic faces. This week, a memo that was penned by a Trump political advisor began circulating in the White House. This is reported by Axios, which is a very reliable news source.

And that it's seeking to paint Dario Amadi, his sister, and Anthropic as associated with a fringe cultish collective of out-of-touch with Americans kind of group that is to be disdained. And that's the kind of putting your thumb on the scale that the White House shouldn't be doing in the private market space.

Beth Lyons (4:44)

Also, aren't you buddies with Elon?

Andy Halliday (4:47)

I mean, sorry.

Beth Lyons (4:50)

I'm just thinking, I didn't think that description was going to be super, super impactful for.

Andy Halliday (4:56)

Right. So, but that group that they're talking to, they're painting as the effective altruism cabal. The people who are saying, hey, there's this approach to morality that's called effective altruism that should be driving what we do. Well, they're just trying to paint that some left lunacy that ought to be completely excoriated by the right. It names Dario Amadei as one of the people who built the effective altruism network, which they described as this secret, like behind the scenes conspiracy thing. And it says that Daniela, his sister, whose husband once led a philanthropy. Oh my God, he ran a philanthropy.

Oh, by the way, it was dedicated to AI safety, right? That all of this is the anthropic knot. It's this scourge on the world from the political perspective of the White House, right? Okay, so in the Florida view of the in the Florida heavy White House and its allies, there's one person who described this as, you know, reflecting the idea that inside that group within the White House, Anthropic is staffed with too many Biden-era liberals, Democrats and strange Californians. And as a result, they're singling Anthropic out to, you know, kind of slant the public view of them and possibly hurt their IPO as a kind of retaliation, right? That's my takeaway anyway. And so they put in this memo that was penned by a political hack, they put in abortion, veganism, devaluing human life over machine intelligence and overvaluing animals over humans, all of these, you know, as part of the character of what the Anthropic cabal is. Wow. So that's Axios reporting I'm reading from here. This is not making up some story. This is what's going on behind the scenes in the sort of the political machinations inside the White House. All right. Now, at the same time as all of that is going down, Geoffrey Hinton, who is often called the godfather of AI, he called President Trump a corrupt, senile felon in a wide ranging interview with The Guardian.