What the Best Business AI Users Are Doing Different

Nathaniel Whittemore (0:00)

The businesses that are using AI the best are really doing things a little bit differently. According to a recent survey, they are building model routers, building organizational and data sovereignty strategies, and generally making their AI management layer much more robust. Along with that, what they are using AI for and the value that they are seeing from it is changing. And in all of this, they are building a template that other businesses can follow, and that's what we'll be discussing today.

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Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines Edition, all the daily AI news you need in around five minutes. A lot of our discussion recently has been around the new emerging competition for personal AI agents, and an early win in those agent wars has delivered Meta stock its best month in years. Meta stock was up 27% in September, even with the 5% slide this week on news that OpenAI was launching a competitor to Muse. That made it Meta's best single month performance since November of 2022, when the company began their year of efficiency with mass layoffs, hiring freezes and a bit of temperance on their Metaverse plans. Muse's early success has so far added half a trillion dollars in market cap. But even more important than that, it has given the market an indication that Meta has a viable AI strategy. The Wall Street consensus has pushed Meta to a strong buy, but not everyone is convinced. Needham Analyst Laura Martin is one of the few sticking with a hold rating in a Thursday Note. Giving them credit, she wrote that Meta has clearly pivoted away from the Metaverse and towards personal agentic AI with Muse at the center. However, she's skeptical of the payoff, noting that Meta is, in her words, notoriously slow at monetizing new products. And indeed, Muse is currently free for all but the biggest power users, and Meta has said they plan to keep user data segregated from their ad business. Even with the launch of an enterprise platform earlier this week, Morningstar argued that Meta's ability to run an enterprise business is unproven, as consumer products remain at the center of the company.

Still, if you're Meta, you gotta be feeling pretty good. Six months ago, investors were questioning the company's basic competence in AI, so the fact that they're now questioning Meta's ability to monetize their successful bets is a huge shift.

Now, staying on the markets theme, Anthropic is pushing to get their IPO out before Thanksgiving, with investor meetings set for later this month. Bloomberg reports that Anthropic aims to begin marketing the IPO in the week of November 9th. That would give them around two weeks for the roadshow, assuming the first day of trading somewhere early on the week of Thanksgiving. Sources said that the timeline is still subject to change, but Anthropic is pushing hard to get the deal out by the end of the year. Ahead of the marketing campaign, Anthropic is planning to host an investor day on October 14th. Institutional investors who may participate in the IPO have been invited to the event, which will give them an opportunity to meet with senior management. News that the timeline is firming up comes after Reuters leaked portions of Anthropic's S1 prospectus earlier in the week. The S1 revealed that Anthropic had an operating loss of $8 billion on revenue of $4.6 billion in 2025 There has been a lot of doomsaying around these numbers, but my position, which I feel very strongly about, is that the idea that when push comes to shove, investors are going to care about 2025 numbers, when Anthropic has more than 10x growth in 2026, I just think is treating Anthropic like they are a company from the pre-AI days, which they are very decidedly not. Now, that is not at all to say that investors are going to love everything they find in the complete prospectus, just that to the extent the IPO underperforms, it won't be their operating loss from 2025 that did it. And I appear to be not alone in this, with Bloomberg reporting that potential IPO investors believe the company can achieve its target valuation of between $1.8 and $2 trillion.

This is, by the way, expected to be the largest IPO in history, taking in more than the $75 billion raised by SpaceX.

Joking about that insanely high target valuation and the inevitable dip that comes after, Litquidity posted, If Anthropic goes public before Thanksgiving, I'd rather just wait to invest during their Black Friday slash Cyber Monday 25% discount.

Meanwhile, staying on Anthropic, perhaps against many expectations, President Trump seems to have taken a liking to Dario.