Anthropic Just Reset AI Expectations
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The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
25 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 4 months ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What significant news did Anthropic announce this week?
Today on the AI Daily Brief, huge news out of Anthropic as the company hires a former OpenAI co-founder and has their first ever quarter of profitability. Before that in the headlines, OpenAI is on the precipice of filing for an IPO. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. All right, friends, quick announcements before we get going. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, Robots and Pencils, Assembly and Section. To get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com slash aiDailyBrief, or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. If you want to learn more about sponsoring the show, send us a note at sponsors at aiDailyBrief.ai.
And aiDailyBrief.ai is also where you can find out about everything else going on in the broader OpenAI ecosystem. We got some juice today, man. One of the biggest things that markets are watching is the moves that the big labs are making vis-a-vis going public. And the Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI has engaged investment bankers and expects to file IPO paperwork as soon as Friday.
What are the implications of OpenAI's IPO plans?
They will file confidentially, meaning that full financial disclosure won't be required until much later. Now, to be clear, if you're not familiar with this process, filing is only the first step in an overall process that will take several months. SpaceX, for example, filed at the beginning of April and are expected to begin trading in mid-June, and their 10-week sprint is absolutely on the faster end of IPO listings. Sources said that OpenAI has set the goal of being ready to IPO by September. The Journal noted that the resolution in the Elon Musk lawsuit has cleared the way. Although unlikely, it was possible that that lawsuit could have unwound OpenAI's for-profit conversion. sending them back to the drawing board on the IPO.
OpenAI's newfound haste could change the IPO race pretty significantly. Up until now, it seemed like Anthropic might get out first with their reported target of October, but Anthropic is said to be putting together one last private round, meaning it's unlikely they'll be able to move up their timeline to match OpenAI. When I was doing my 2026 predictions, one that very clearly I will get wrong was I thought that ultimately, anthropic and open AI would not go public this year, based on just what a pain public markets can be when you're trying to move fast, as well as the seemingly endless amount of funding in the private markets. But the circumstances have clearly changed. The constraints on compute are even greater than I had imagined.
And so public market access is looking even more important than it might have just a couple of months ago. Now there's an interesting question on whether the sequence actually makes sense. I tend to be in the camp that there is going to be effectively infinite bids for both of these companies. But the one interesting wrinkle is that if you think these IPOs could actually stretch public market liquidity, which isn't totally inconceivable given the trajectory that they're on, there could be some disadvantage in going last. Frankly, the fact that the SpaceX IPO is now not a referendum on Grok, but is going to be much more about Elon settling into this new role as the hereditary Earl of Compute, I actually think makes it much more exciting for public market investors than it was just literally two weeks ago.
Bloomberg's Conor Senn wrote, The same day that it's reported OpenAI wants to IPO as soon as September, we get a Wall Street Journal story with updated impressive anthropic financials. Doesn't seem like a coincidence. I like the game theory of three $1-2 trillion companies all about to IPO, trying to beat each other to the liquidity window, and public market investors thinking about the impact on their holdings. Should make for an interesting summer. Over in policy land, the major labs have been read in on a new AI executive order that could arrive by the end of the week. The information reports that the White House's Office of the National Cyber Director held a briefing on Tuesday to discuss the contents of the order.
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