Is The AI Debt Bubble Finally Popping? | Weekly Roundup

Jason Yano (0:00)

Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. All right, everyone, welcome back to Empire. We got the roundup, we got Santi, we got Rob. Santi, look at that haircut, my friend.

Santiago Roel (0:14)

Dude, I've been on the road, I went to Singapore, and then I'm in a different location now. I didn't even have time to go to my normal haircut place.

Jason Yano (0:21)

Needless to say.

Santiago Roel (0:22)

I can tell. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. If you can tell.

Rob Hadick (0:27)

I think it looks nice.

Santiago Roel (0:28)

Thank you, Rob. I appreciate you. This is why Rob is on my mind.

Rob Hadick (0:31)

Rob, you look good.

Jason Yano (0:32)

Rob, you look nice today.

All right. It's going to be a good app.

Rob Hadick (0:37)

It's not just in hiding, it seems like. He had to go somewhere else to get a haircut.

Santiago Roel (0:43)

I'll tell you where I am because he wanted to give me a line here.

He's like, listen, and I said, no, no, trust me. I was so on edge when I was getting my hair cut because I couldn't lay my head on my phone because this guy would have just given me one of those and in the eyebrows.

Jason Yano (1:02)

Santi was like, do not tell anyone where I am right now, and he has a painting behind him of where he is.

Santiago Roel (1:12)

Oh, Shelvin, you can't tell from that. I guess the AI could make sense where I am.

Jason Yano (1:17)

I'm sure if we screenshot of this, it would say where you are. Oh, man. How are you guys doing? How's the week?

Santiago Roel (1:24)

Great.

Well, market is doing its thing. You would have thought that the crypto markets would be more volatile. Actually, let's just start there. I would have been, I mean, equity markets have been on, particularly the AI complex has been on a total free fall. Incredibly volatile, stuff's down 20, 30 percent, 10 percent days are normal. Surprisingly, Bitcoin's held up quite well, and the rest of crypto has been holding up quite well. But maybe we can start there. I thought that was unexpectedly positive. Yeah, let's start there.

Jason Yano (1:57)

So far. Very important. We actually have someone from Spotify who listens to our podcast. We are allowed to swear. Remember I said we can't swear? We are allowed to swear.

Rob Hadick (2:07)

Fuck yes.

Jason Yano (2:08)

Yes. So we're lucky.

Santiago Roel (2:10)

Yeah.

Rob's been holding that back. You just told Rob we've been holding that back for a long time. Rob, welcome to the club.

Jason Yano (2:17)

Let's go.

Santiago Roel (2:18)

Let's fucking go.

Jason Yano (2:19)

Let's go. All right.

Santi, you start. How do we feel? Like, okay, so crypto has held up pretty well. AI just like insane volatility. I think there's probably the most interesting prediction market out there right now is like will Anthropic IPO or not? So let's talk, discuss.

Santiago Roel (2:37)

Not to make this an AI pod. Obviously people have been, I think the entire market is very focused on Anthropics run rate figure.

It was, they're doing this, presumably this road show, you know, going to, looking to go public north of a trillion.

Rob Hadick (2:51)

I don't think the road show has started yet. I think it's going to start in a few weeks.

Santiago Roel (2:54)

They've had discussions. The number leaked yesterday.

Rob Hadick (2:56)

So they, yeah, but they didn't do some like pre like marketing stuff, but like we're going to the actual road show to price it. I think in the next three to four weeks.

Santiago Roel (3:04)

They're talking to the buys. What was leaked last night by the FT was that their ARR number was quarterly was like 16.3, which people, I mean, the market, this was after hours, like all the memory names, all the other Neo clouds, all that, like took a hit markets down as well. This morning, I think there continues to be concerns around open source, closed source, if Anthropic is losing market share, like revenue seems to...

Rob Hadick (3:33)

Definitely losing market share.

Jason Yano (3:34)

There's no doubt about that.

Santiago Roel (3:36)

So go listen to Gavin Baker and the Ultimeter podcast with Jensen, if you want some relief in your portfolio. But basically the thing is, yes, it seems like Anthropic is slowed down in terms of growth, hard to believe that they're going to be in 100 billion run rate by the end of the year.