[HN Gopher] Anthropic taps IPO lawyers as it races OpenAI to go ...
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Anthropic taps IPO lawyers as it races OpenAI to go public
https://archive.md/HqXUD
Author : GeorgeWoff25
Score : 244 points
Date : 2025-12-03 09:53 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| rvz wrote:
| > In a statement, an Anthropic spokesperson said: "We have not
| made any decisions about when, or even whether, to go public."
|
| They are going public.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Well, they have to. Every grift needs bagholders.
|
| If they get to be a memestock, they might even keep the grift
| going for a good while. See Tesla as a good example of this.
| zerosizedweasle wrote:
| Okay, let's see you guys get passed the inference costs
| disclosure. According to WSJ it is enough to kill the frontier
| shop business model. It's one of the biggest things blocking
| OpenAI
|
| https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/big-techs-soaring-profits-have-a...
| politelemon wrote:
| Do you mean as part of going public they need to make public
| how much they spend on inference versus how much they make?
| blackjack_ wrote:
| Yes to IPO you have to submit an S-1 form which requires the
| last 3 years of your full financials and much more. You can't
| just IPO without disclosing how your business works and
| whether it makes or loses money and how much.
| ac29 wrote:
| Inference costs aren't a problem, selling inference is almost
| certainly profitable. The problem is that its (probably) not
| profitable enough to cover the training and other R&D costs.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Don't forget all the other costs of their business, like
| paying sales and solutions people (expensive, not going away
| any time soon).
| vessenes wrote:
| You did not parse that article properly. It regurgitates only
| what everyone else keeps saying: when you conflate R&D costs
| with operating costs, then you can say these companies are
| 'unprofitable'. I'd propose with a proper GAAP accounting they
| are profitable right now; by proper I mean that you amortize
| out the costs of R&D against the useful life of the models as
| best you can.
|
| I am not aware of _any_ frontier inference disclosures that put
| margins at less than 60%. Inference is profitable across the
| industry, full stop.
|
| Historically R&D has been profitable for the frontier labs --
| this is obscured because the emphasis on scaling the last five
| years has meant they just keep 10xing their R&D compute budget.
| But for each cycle of R&D, the results have returned more in
| inference margin than they cost in training compute. This is
| one major reason we keep seeing more spend on R&D - so far it
| has paid, in the form of helping a number of companies hit >
| $1bn in annual revenue faster than almost any companies in
| history have done so.
|
| All that said, be cautious shorting these stocks when they go
| public.
| spacecadet wrote:
| AGI will become IPO and everyone will forget and move on.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| It's interesting that Amazon don't appear interested in acquiring
| Anthropic, which would have seemed like somewhat of a natural fit
| given that they are already partnered, Anthropic have apparently
| optimized (or at least adapted) for Trainium, and Amazon don't
| have their own frontier model.
|
| It seems that Amazon are playing this much like Microsoft -
| seeing themselves are more of a cloud provider, happy to serve
| anyone's models, and perhaps only putting a moderate effort into
| building their own models (which they'll be happy to serve to
| those who want that capability/price point).
|
| I don't see the pure "AI" plays like OpenAI and Anthropic able to
| survive as independent companies when they are competing against
| the likes of Google, and with Microsoft and Amazon happy to serve
| whatever future model comes along.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| LOL of course they don't want to own Anthropic, else they
| themselves would be responsible for coming up with the $10s of
| billions in Monopoly money that Anthropic has committed to pay
| AMZN for compute in the next few years. Better to take an
| impressive looking stake and leave some other idiot holding the
| buck.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Isn't taking an impressive looking stake, in effect, leaving
| them holding the buck?
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| Amazon also uses Claude under the hood for their "Rufus"
| shopping search assistant which is all over amazon.com.
|
| It's kind of funny, you can ask Rufus for stuff like "write a
| hello world in python for me" and then it will do it and also
| recommend some python books.
| hbosch wrote:
| Are you sure? While Amazon doesn't own a "true" frontier
| model they have their own foundation model called Nova.
|
| I assume if Amazon was using Claude's latest models to power
| it's AI tools, such as Alexa+ or Rufus, they would be much
| better than they currently are. I assume if their consumer
| facing AI is using Claude at all it would be a Sonnet or
| Haiku model from 1+ versions back simply due to cost.
| somebodythere wrote:
| Rufus is a Claude Haiku, yes.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| > I assume if their consumer facing AI is using Claude at
| all it would be a Sonnet or Haiku model from 1+ versions
| back simply due to cost.
|
| I would assume quite the opposite: it costs more to support
| and run inference on the old models. Why would Anthropic
| make inference cheaper for others, but not for amazon?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Are you sure? While Amazon doesn't own a "true" frontier
| model they have their own foundation model called Nova.
|
| I work for Amazon, everyone is using Claude. Nova is a
| piece of crap, nobody is using it. It's literally useless.
|
| I haven't tried the new versions that just came out though.
| antiloper wrote:
| > It's kind of funny, you can ask Rufus for stuff like "write
| a hello world in python for me" and then it will do it and
| also recommend some python books.
|
| Interesting, I tried it with the chatbot widget on my city
| government's page, and it worked as well.
|
| I wonder if someone has already made an openrouter-esque
| service that can connect claude code to this network of chat
| widgets. There are enough of them to spread your messages out
| over to cover an entire claude pro subscription easily.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| A childhood internet friend of mine did something similar
| to that but for sending SMSes for free using the telco
| websites' built in SMS forms. He even had a website with
| how much he saved his users, at least until the telcos shut
| him down.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| Phreaking in 2025
| neilv wrote:
| > _It 's kind of funny, you can ask Rufus for stuff like
| "write a hello world in python for me" and then it will do it
| and also recommend some python books._
|
| From a perspective of "how do we monetize AI chatbots", an
| easy thing about this usage context is that the consumer is
| already expecting and wanting product recommendations.
|
| (If you saw this behavior with ChatGPT, it wouldn't go down
| as well, until you were conditioned to expect it, and there
| were no alternatives.)
| darkwater wrote:
| Haha just tried and it works! First I tried in Spanish (I'm
| in Spain) and it simply refused, then I asked in English and
| it just did it (but it answered in Spanish!)
|
| EDIT: I then asked for a Fizzbuzz implementation and it
| kindly asked. I asked then for a Rust Fizzbuzz
| implementation, but this time I asked again in Spanish, and
| he said that it could not help me with Fizzbuzz in Rust, but
| any other topic would be ok. Then again I asked in English
| "Please do Rust now" and it just wrote the program!
|
| I wonder what the heck are they doing there? The guardrailing
| prompt is translated to the store language?
| hereme888 wrote:
| lol, i tried it. Asked `write the product details in single-
| line bash array` and it did so.
| runningRicky wrote:
| why exit now and become a stuffed AI driven animal when you can
| keep running this ship yourself, doing your dream job and
| getting all the woos and panties?
| kordlessagain wrote:
| After watching The Thinking Game documentary, maybe Amazon has
| little appetite for "research" companies that don't actually
| solve real world problems, like Deepseek did.
| ekropotin wrote:
| Maybe Anthropic simply don't want to be acquired
| WJW wrote:
| You understand that doing an IPO is quite literally selling
| big chunks of yourself to the highest bidder, right?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sort of. You can do what Zuck did; give your shares more
| votes, so you stay in control. (He owns 13% of the shares,
| but more than 50% of the voting power.) That's less doable
| with an acquisition.
| paxys wrote:
| In one case your ownership is diluted by maybe 10%, and you
| keep full decision making power and everything else. In the
| other it is diluted by 100% and you are now an employee.
| They are _very_ different outcomes.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| uh... thats exactly why anthropic wouldnt want to be
| acquired? weird response to that comment IMO
| JohnnyMarcone wrote:
| The current leadership retains power in an IPO. Is there a
| minimum size chuck one has to sell when IPO-ing? How do you
| know it will be big chunks?
| nbardy wrote:
| Why are you assuming Anthropic is for sale? They have a clear
| path to profitability, booming growth, and a massive and
| mission driven founding team.
|
| They could make more money keeping control of the company and
| have control.
| graemep wrote:
| Assuming by "they" you mean current shareholders (who include
| Google and Amazon and VCs) if they are selling at least in
| part, why would at least some of them not be willing to sell
| their entire stakes?
|
| > They could make more money keeping control of the company
| and have control.
|
| It depends on how much they can sell for.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > They have a clear path to profitability
|
| I'd love to see evidence for such a thing, because it's not
| clear to me at all that this is the case.
|
| I personally think they're the best of the model providers
| but not sure if any foundation model companies (pure play)
| have a path to profitability.
| JohnnyMarcone wrote:
| What do you mean by pure play? Claude code alone is 1B
| revenue. It's not just the API they make money on.
|
| https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-acquires-bun-as-
| cla...
| tapoxi wrote:
| But there's no moat around these models, they're all
| interchangeable and leapfrogging each other at a decent
| pace.
|
| Gemini could get much better tomorrow and their entire
| customer base could switch without issue.
| apercu wrote:
| And, if your revenue is $1B but your costs are $2B it
| only lasts until the music stops....
| dwaltrip wrote:
| I don't think they are losing money on inference.
|
| Model training, sure. But that will slow down at some
| point.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I think Claude Code _is_ the moat (though I definitely
| recognize it 's a pretty shallow moat). I don't want to
| switch to Codex or whatever the Gemini CLI is, I like
| Claude Code and I've gotten used to how it works.
|
| Again, I know that's a shallow moat - agents just aren't
| that complex from a pure code perspective, and there are
| already tools that you can use to proxy Claude Code's
| requests out to different models. But at least in my own
| experience there is a definite stickiness to Claude that
| I probably won't bother to overcome if your model is 1.1x
| better. I pay for Google Business or whatever it's called
| primarily to maintain my vanity email and I get some
| level of Gemini usage for free, and I barely touch it,
| even though I'm hearing good things about it.
|
| (If anything I'm convincing myself to give Gemini a
| closer look, but I don't think that undermines my
| overarching (though slightly soft) point).
| JohnnyMarcone wrote:
| What was the moat in search?
| input_sh wrote:
| PageRank, everything before PageRank was more like yellow
| pages than a search engine as we know it today. Google
| also had a patent on it, so it's not like other people
| could simply copy it.
|
| Google was also way more minimal (and therefore faster on
| slow connections) and it raised enough money to operate
| without ads for years (while its competitors were filled
| with them).
|
| Not really comparable to today, when you have 3-4
| products which are pretty much identical, all operating
| under a huge loss.
| efficax wrote:
| Google had PageRank, which gave them much better quality
| results (and they got users to stick with them by
| offering lots of free services (like gmail) that were
| better quality than existing paid services). The
| difference was night and day compared to the best other
| search engines at the time (WebCrawler was my goto, then
| sometimes AltaVista). The quality difference between
| "foundation" models is nil. Even the huge models they run
| in datacenters are hardly better than local models you
| can run on a machine 64gb+ ram (though faster of course).
| As Google grew it got better and better at giving you
| good results and fighting spam, while other search
| engines drowned in spam and were completely ruined by
| SEO.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The sheer amount of data and infrastructure Google has
| relative to their competitors.
|
| Just having far more user search queries and click data
| gives them a huge advantage.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| Which is not a lot at all compared to their cost and
| especially the valuation discussed here.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And the same question I always ask.
|
| Are they profitable (no),
|
| Is Claude Code even running at a marginal profit? (who
| knows)
|
| Is the marginal profit large enough to pay for continued
| R&D to stay competitive (no)
|
| Does Claude Code have a sustainable advantage over what
| Amazon, Microsoft and Google can do in this space using
| their incumbency advantage and _actual profits_ and using
| their own infrastructure?
| jbs789 wrote:
| They are selling, to public equity investors, because they
| can get a better price that way than selling to another
| company!
| Keyframe wrote:
| _Why are you assuming Anthropic is for sale?_
|
| They're preparing for IPO?
| parapatelsukh wrote:
| signed D. Amodei lmao
| solumunus wrote:
| We're not assuming anything, this whole post is about them
| doing an IPO...
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Amazon and Microsoft are protecting themselves from the bubble.
| turnsout wrote:
| Yes, repackaging and reselling AI is a starkly better
| business than creating frontier models
| epsilonic wrote:
| I think they're waiting for bargain bin deals once the bubble
| collapses.
| echelon wrote:
| This.
|
| The market is too new for AI.
|
| AI is unquestionably useful, but we don't have enough product
| categories.
|
| We're in the "electric horse carriage" phase and the big
| research companies are pleading with businesses to adopt AI.
| The problem is you can't do that.
|
| AI companies are asking you to AI, but they aren't telling
| you how or what it can do. That shouldn't be how things are
| sold. The use case should be overwhelmingly obvious.
|
| It'll take a decade for AI native companies, workflows, UIs,
| and true synergies between UI and use case to spring up. And
| they won't be from generic research labs, but will instead
| marry the AI to the problem domain.
|
| Open source AI that you can fine tune to the control surface
| is what will matter. Not one-size-fits-all APIs and chat
| interfaces.
|
| ChatGPT and Sora are showing off what they think the future
| of image and video are. Meanwhile actual users like the
| insanely popular VFX YouTube channel are using crude tools
| like ComfyUI to adopt the models to their problems. And
| companies like Adobe are actual building the control plane.
| Their recent conference was on fire with UI+AI that makes
| sense for designers. Not some chat interface.
|
| We're in the "AI" dialup era. The broadband/smartphone era is
| still ahead of us.
|
| These companies and VCs thought they were going to mint new
| Googles and Amazons, but it's more than likely they were the
| WebVans whose carcasses pave the way.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Lol, no one would want to buy that trash.
|
| Same w/ Perplexity.
| cmiles8 wrote:
| Would have made a lot of sense a few years ago, but not now.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| It is spending a lot of money to do the same thing (selling the
| shovels), and gaining maybe a bit bigger cut if the bubble
| _doesn 't_ burst too violently.
| apercu wrote:
| Hence the need to cash out.
| boh wrote:
| They're likely just waiting out the eventual crash and waiting
| to buy at the resulting fire sale. Microsoft has done a very
| good job of investing in the space enough to see a potentially
| lucrative pay out while managing the risk enough to not be sunk
| if it doesn't pan out.
| Fergusonb wrote:
| Something something selling shovels in a gold rush.
| solumunus wrote:
| I too would be sitting back and watching my competitors commit
| insane capital to this unlikely bet.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Anthropic is a $1T company in the making (by 2030), already
| raised their last round at ~$200B valuation. Do you really
| think Amazon can acquire them? They already invested a lot of
| money in them and probably own at least 20% of Anthropic, which
| was the smartest thing Jassy did in a while. Not to mention, if
| Adobe wasn't allowed to buy Figma, do you think Amazon will be
| allowed to buy Anthropic? No way it's going to be approved.
|
| > I don't see the pure "AI" plays like OpenAI and Anthropic
| able to survive as independent companies when they are
| competing against the likes of Google, and with Microsoft and
| Amazon happy to serve whatever future model comes along.
|
| One thing you're right about - Anthropic isn't surviving - it's
| thriving. Probably the fastest growing revenue in history.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Well, just to show you a microcosm of what happens when VCs
| find the bigger fool in the public market when they IPO money
| losing companies....
|
| https://medium.com/@Arakunrin/the-post-ipo-performance-
| of-y-...
|
| > _One thing you 're right about - Anthropic isn't surviving
| - it's thriving. Probably the fastest growing revenue in
| history._
|
| Growing revenue and losing money is not "thriving"
| paxys wrote:
| It's safe to assume that a company like Anthropic has been
| getting (and rejecting) a steady stream of acquisition offers,
| including from the likes of Amazon, from the moment they got
| proninent in the AI space.
| spprashant wrote:
| I get the feeling Amazon wants to be the shovel seller for the
| AI rush than be a frontier model lab.
|
| There is no moat in being a frontier model developer. A week,
| month, or a year later there will be a open source alternative
| which is about 95% as good for most tasks people care about.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Haven't they invested hundreds of millions trying to train
| frontier models?
| spprashant wrote:
| I don't know how much they are spending to be fair.
|
| I am basing my observation on the noises they are making.
| They did put out a model called Nova but they are not
| drumming it up at all. The model page makes no claims of
| benchmarks or performance. There are no signs of them
| poaching talent. Their CEO has not been in the press
| singing praises about AI unlike every big tech CEO.
|
| Maybe they have a skunk-works team on it but something
| tells me they are waiting for the paint to dry.
| efficax wrote:
| why would you take on that burn rate when you can invest, get
| the investment back over time in cloud spend, and maybe make
| off like bandits when they ipo
| Havoc wrote:
| Retail investors yoloing into AI at peak bubble vibes sounds
| about right
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the real note - if the company was _truly_ valuable,
| they wouldn 't IPO, they'd get slurped up by someone big.
|
| Modern IPOs are mainly dumping on retail and index investors.
| antiloper wrote:
| Index investors aren't exposed to IPOs, since the common
| indexes (SPX etc) don't include IPOs (and if you invest in a
| YOLO index that does, that's on you).
|
| Also:
|
| > The US led a sharp rebound, driven by a surge in IPO
| filings and strong post-listing returns following the Federal
| Reserve's rate cut.
|
| https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/ipo/trends
| outside1234 wrote:
| VTI and VT, two of the largest index funds, DO invest in
| unprofitable companies.
|
| And for the rest (SP 500 etc), these companies are going to
| fake profits using some sort of financial engineering to be
| included.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| What index fund is buying into IPOs ? The S&P 420?
| andrew_lettuce wrote:
| This isn't really true. IPOs provide access to much more
| money in a very short time frame. They also allow parties
| involved to make huge coin before, during and immediately
| after the process.
| torginus wrote:
| Just how much of the market do retail investors control? I
| thought they were a drop in the bucket.
|
| Also, is there a way to know how much of the total volume of
| shares is being traded now? If I kept hyping my company
| (successfully), and drove the share price from $10 to $1000,
| thanks to retail hype, I could 100x the value of my company
| lets say from $100m to $10B, while the amount of money actually
| changing hands would be miniscule in comparison.
| theptip wrote:
| Retail is a big deal these days. Used to be sub 10%, now it's
| in the 30-40% of daily volume range IIUC.
|
| You can easily look up the numbers you are asking for, the
| TLDR is that the volume in most stocks is high enough that
| you can't manipulate it much. If it's even 2x overpriced then
| there's 100m on the table for whoever spots this and shorts,
| ie enough money that plenty of smart people will be spending
| effort on modeling and valuation studies.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Retail is a big deal these days. Used to be sub 10%, now
| it's in the 30-40% of daily volume range IIUC.
|
| This isn't going to end well is it.
| hvb2 wrote:
| > Retail is a big deal these days. Used to be sub 10%, now
| it's in the 30-40% of daily volume range IIUC.
|
| But that isn't relevant? If they trade a lot but own less
| than 10% of the shares they're still a small piece.
|
| The institutional investors are likely not trading much,
| things like 401k are all long term investments
| andrew_lettuce wrote:
| When you add in money managed on behalf of retail investors
| it gets big fast, thinking indexed funds, pensions etc. they
| are not immune, and ETFs by definition need to participate
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| You are correct in the main thing you were trying to
| communicate, but I'll just correct this part:
|
| > ETFs by definition need to participate
|
| You meant to say "index funds". There are many different
| kinds of ETFs.
| wyre wrote:
| Is that not considered institutional? If i own a Vanguard
| ETF, the stock that comprises the ETF is classified as
| being owned by Vanguard, right?
|
| Genuinely asking.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Retail has gotten alot bigger lately( last 10 years and
| mostly since covid) and alot more "organized".
|
| Goldman puts out their retail reports weekly that show retail
| is 20% of trading in alot of names and higher in alot of the
| meme stock names.
|
| They used to be so tiny due to $50/trade fees, but with the
| advent of all the free money in the system since covid and
| GenZ feeling like real estate won't be their path to freedom,
| and option trading for retail, and zero commission trading
| retail has a real voice in the markets.
| thoughtfulchris wrote:
| It could be smart for them to get in now with so much talk of a
| bubble or potential stock market correction.
| hansmayer wrote:
| ...this -> those bags wont hold themselves now, will they ?
| Ekaros wrote:
| "Be first, be smarter, or cheat" well. Being first might really
| be the best game theory move if the collapse will start from
| you.
| antiloper wrote:
| But they aren't the first. Google is the first frontier model
| lab to go public.
| margorczynski wrote:
| I guess the clock is ticking. Probably OAI will try to IPO soon
| also.
| catigula wrote:
| This seems contrary to their stated goal to prioritize AI safety.
|
| It is against the law to prioritize AI safety if you run a public
| company. You must prioritize profits for your shareholders.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| Do you think they currently exist to prioritize AI safety? That
| shit won't pay the bills, will it? Then they don't exist. Goals
| are nice, OKRs yay, but at the end of the day, we all know the
| dollar drives everything.
| simgt wrote:
| No that's not what they think, that's why they used sarcasm.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| It's simple, they will redefine the term (just like OpenAI
| redefined "AGI" into "just makes a lot of money) into
| "doesn't leak user data" and then claim success
| sidrag22 wrote:
| "We expect that advertising funded search engines will be
| inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the
| needs of the consumers."
|
| -google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
|
| then came the dot com bubble.
| vessenes wrote:
| Unless you're a benefit corp, this is true for private
| companies as well. Quick q - which of the AI companies are
| benefit corps?
| catigula wrote:
| Anthropic, the corporation we're talking about.
| wyre wrote:
| Yes, they will prioritize AI safety until their board of
| directors says that needs to change.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| One of Google's stated goals was "don't be evil". This stuff
| shouldn't be trusted - it's pure marketing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It is against the law to prioritize AI safety if you run a
| public company. You must prioritize profits for your
| shareholders_
|
| This is nonsense. Public companies are just as free as private
| companies to maximise whatever sharedholders wants them to.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| Incorrect. They're not a C corp, they're a public benefit
| corporation. They have a different legal obligation. Notably,
| they have a legal obligation to deliver on their mission.
| That's why Anthropic is the only actual mission-driven AI
| company. They do have to balance that legal obligation with the
| traditional legal obligations that a for-profit corporation
| has. But most importantly, it is actually against the law for
| them not to balance prioritizing making money and prioritizing
| AI safety!
| baggachipz wrote:
| That S1 is gonna make for a fun read. It'll make Adam Neumann
| blush.
| conroydave wrote:
| that wework s1 was gold
| esafak wrote:
| Elevating the world's consciousness!
| https://www.wework.com/newsroom/wecompany
| Lionga wrote:
| Dario Amodei gives of strong Adam Neumann vibes. He claimed "AI
| will replace 90% of developers within 6 months" about a year
| ago...
| dkdcio wrote:
| that's not what he claimed, just to be clear. I'm too lazy to
| look up the full quote but not lazy enough to not comment
| this is A) out of context B) mis-phrased as to entirely
| misconstrue the already taken-out-of-context quote
|
| I think it was also back in March, not a year ago
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-
| ai-90-percent-... (March 2025):
|
| >"I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI
| is writing 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may
| be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the
| code," Amodei said at a Council of Foreign Relations event
| on Monday.
|
| >Amodei said software developers would still have a role to
| play in the near term. This is because humans will have to
| feed the AI models with design features and conditions, he
| said.
|
| >"But on the other hand, I think that eventually all those
| little islands will get picked off by AI systems. And then,
| we will eventually reach the point where the AIs can do
| everything that humans can. And I think that will happen in
| every industry," Amodei said.
|
| I think it's a silly and poorly defined claim.
| dkdcio wrote:
| you're once again cutting the quote short -- after "all
| of the code" he has more to say that's very important for
| understanding the context and avoiding this rage-bait BS
| we all love to engage in
|
| edit: sorry you mostly included it paraphrased; it does a
| disservice (I understand it's largely the media's fault)
| to cut that full quote short though. I'm trying to
| specifically address someone claiming this person said
| 90% of developers would be replaced in a year over a year
| ago, which is beyond misleading
|
| edit to put the full quote higher:
|
| > "and in 12 months, we might be in a world where the ai
| is writing essentially all of the code. But the
| programmer still needs to specify what are the conditions
| of what you're doing. What is the overall design
| decision. How we collaborate with other code that has
| been written. How do we have some common sense with
| whether this is a secure design or an insecure design. So
| as long as there are these small pieces that a programmer
| has to do, then I think human productivity will actually
| be enhanced"
| parapatelsukh wrote:
| can you post the full quote then? He has posted what the
| rest of us read
| dkdcio wrote:
| I believe:
|
| > "and in 12 months, we might be in a world where the ai
| is writing essentially all of the code. But the
| programmer still needs to specify what are the conditions
| of what you're doing. What is the overall design
| decision. How we collaborate with other code that has
| been written. How do we have some common sense with
| whether this is a secure design or an insecure design. So
| as long as there are these small pieces that a programmer
| has to do, then I think human productivity will actually
| be enhanced"
|
| from https://www.youtube.com/live/esCSpbDPJik?si=kYt9oSD5
| bZxNE-Mn
|
| (sorry have been responding quickly on my phone between
| things; misquotes like this annoy the fuck out of me)
| parapatelsukh wrote:
| how does that quote disprove anything
| dkdcio wrote:
| uh it proves the original comment I responded to is
| extremely misleading (which is my only point here); CEO
| did not say 90% of developers would be replaced, at all
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| And 12 months later Anthropic is listing 200 open positions
| for humans: https://www.anthropic.com/jobs
| JimDabell wrote:
| Of course they are. The two things aren't contradictory at
| all, in fact one strongly implies the other. If AI is
| writing 90% of your code, that means the total contribution
| of a developer is 10x the code they would write without AI.
| This means you get way more value per developer, so why
| _wouldn't_ you keep hiring developers?
|
| This idea that "AI writes 90% of our code" means you don't
| need developers seems to spring from a belief that there is
| a fixed amount of software to produce, so if AI is doing
| 90% of it then you only need 10% of the developers. So far,
| the world's appetite for software is insatiable and every
| time we get more productive, we use the same amount of
| effort to build more software than before.
|
| The point at which Anthropic will stop hiring developers is
| when AI meets or exceeds the capabilities of the best human
| developers. Then they can just buy more servers instead of
| hiring developers. But nobody is claiming AI is capable of
| that so far, so of course they are going to capitalise on
| their productivity gains by hiring more developers.
| efsavage wrote:
| It was "writing 90% of the code", which seems to be pretty
| accurate, if not conservative, for those keeping up with the
| latest tools.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Yes, those using the tools use the tools, but I don't
| really see those developers absolutely outpacing the rest
| of developers who do it the old fashioned way still.
| efsavage wrote:
| I think you're definitely right, for the moment. I've
| been forcing myself to use/learn the tools almost
| exclusively for the past 3-4 months and I was definitely
| not seeing any big wins early on, but improvement (of my
| skills and the tools) has been steady and positive, and
| right now I'd say I'm ahead of where I was the old-
| fashioned way, but on an uneven basis. Some things I'm
| probably still behind on, others I'm way ahead. My
| workflow is also evolving and my output is of higher
| quality (especially tests/docs). A year from now I'll be
| shocked if doing nearly anything without some kind of
| augmented tooling doesn't feel tremendously slow and/or
| low-quality.
| dkdcio wrote:
| it's wild that engineers need months or years to properly
| learn programming languages but dismiss AI tooling after
| one bad interaction
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Motivated reasoning combined with incomplete truths is
| the perfect recipe for this.
|
| I kind of get it, especially if you are stuck on some
| shitty enterprise AI offering from 2024.
|
| But overall it's rather silly and immature.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I think inertia and determinism play roles here. If you
| invest months in learning an established programming
| language, it's not likely to change much during that
| time, nor in the months (and years) that follow. Your
| hard-earned knowledge is durable and easy to keep up to
| date.
|
| In the AI coding and tooling space everything seems to be
| constantly changing: which models, what workflows, what
| tools are in favor are all in flux. My hesitancy to dive
| in and regularly include AI tooling in my own programming
| workflow is largely about that. I'd rather wait until the
| dust has settled some.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Is this the new 'next year is the year of the Linux desktop'?
| ddp26 wrote:
| Because of unprofitability? ARR and growth are very high, and
| margins are either good or can soon become good.
|
| Is the claim that coding agents can't be profitable?
| runako wrote:
| > margins are either good or can soon become good
|
| This is always the pitch for money-losing IPOs. Occasionally,
| it is true.
| sc68cal wrote:
| > margins are either good or can soon become good.
|
| Their margins are negative and every increase in usage
| results in more cost. They have a whole leaderboard of people
| who pay $20 a month and then use $60,000 of compute.
|
| https://www.viberank.app
| harmmonica wrote:
| Do you mind giving a bit more details in layman's terms
| about this assuming the $60k per subscriber isn't
| hyperbole? Is that the total cost of the latest training
| run amortized per existing subscriber plus the inference
| cost to serve that one subscriber?
|
| If you tell me to click the link, I did, but backed out
| because I thought you'd actually be willing to break it
| down here instead. I could also ask Claude about it I
| guess.
| alwa wrote:
| It counted up the tokens that users on "unlimited"
| Max/Pro plans consumed through CC, and calculated what it
| would cost to buy that number of tokens through the API.
|
| $60K in a month was unusual (and possibly exaggerated);
| amounts in the $Ks were not. For which people would pay
| $200 on their Max plan.
|
| Since that bonanza period Anthropic seem to have reined
| things in, largely through (obnoxiously tight) weekly
| consumption limits for their subscription plans.
|
| It's a strange feeling to be talking about this as if it
| were ancient history, when it was only a few months
| ago... strange times.
| harmmonica wrote:
| So they're now putting in aggressive caps and the other
| two paths they have to address the gap is to drive
| the/their cost of those tokens way down and/or the user
| pays many multiples of their current subscription. That's
| not to say that's odd for any business to expect their
| costs to decrease substantially and their pricing power
| to increase, but even if the gap is "only" low thousands
| to $200 that's...significant. Thanks for the insight.
| 542458 wrote:
| That site seems to date from the days before there were
| real usage limits on Claude Code. Note that none of the
| submissions are recent. As such, I think it's basically
| irrelevant - the general observation is that Claude Code
| will rate limit you long, long before you can pull off the
| usage depicted so it's unlikely you can be massively net-
| profit-negative on Claude Code.
| parapatelsukh wrote:
| let's see them then
| BonoboIO wrote:
| SoftBank is just waiting to invest in this ...
| dnw wrote:
| I was thinking this is going to happen because last night I got
| an email about them fixing how they collect sales taxes. Having
| been part of a couple of IPO/acquisitions, I thought to myself:
| "Nobody cares about sales taxes until they need to IPO or sell."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Source:
| https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/3ffefa...
| muffa wrote:
| I love claude, but looking at google it seems like it will just
| be a matter of time before Google/Gemini will be a better
| product. Just looking at how much Google have improved their AI
| game the last couple months. I'm putting my money on google, I
| assume the reason they are doing an IPO right now is to be able
| to cash in on the investment before google surpasses them.
|
| It's a hot take, I know :D
| baq wrote:
| Opus 4.5 is _good_. At least in Cursor it's much better than
| Gemini 3 Pro for writing a lot of code autonomously: faster and
| calls tools better.
|
| That said Gemini is still very, very good at reviews, SQL,
| design and smaller (relatively) edits; but today it is not at
| all obvious that Google is going to win it all. They're
| positioned very well, but execution needs to be top notch.
| aantix wrote:
| Have you tried Opus 4.5?
|
| It's an absolute workhorse.
|
| It is so proactive in fixing blockers - 90% of the time for me,
| choosing the right path forward.
| ramoz wrote:
| No company has come close to producing as close as of a
| reliable agentic coding solution as Anthropic has.
| nikcub wrote:
| There have been multiple model generations now where Anthropic
| have proven that they're ahead of everyone with developing LLMs
| for coding - if anything the gap has broadened with Opus 4.5.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Codex is and has been superior for some time (though it is
| slower)
| cebert wrote:
| What types of tasks do you find Codex superior?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Does this mean that Anthropic has more than reached AGI, seeing
| as OpenAI has officially defined "AGI" as any AI that manages to
| create more than a hectocorn's worth (100 unicorns, or $100B) in
| economic value?
| andsoitis wrote:
| If they have reached AGI (whatever the definition), we should
| be prioritizing looking for signs of _misanthropy_.
| rvnx wrote:
| https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/2024/11/15/3ea53e31-.
| ..
|
| Google Gemini
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| defined ? You mean re-defined to turn it into goal that's
| achievable within reasonable timeframe
| medler wrote:
| That was $100B in profits, not valuation.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Profits over what timeframe? Valuation is just the total sum
| of profit discounted for time and risk.
| ares623 wrote:
| I guess (hope) this means they don't see a bailout happening soon
| enough
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Let the enshitification of Claude commence!
| nextworddev wrote:
| interesting HN is so bearish considering most of them spend more
| on AI daily than any other saas category
| schmichael wrote:
| Citation needed?
|
| I spend $0 on AI. My employer spends on it for me, but I have
| no idea how much nor how it compares to vast array of other
| SaaS my employer provides for me.
|
| While I anecdotally know of many devs who do pay out of pocket
| for relatively expensive LLM services, they a minority compared
| to folks like me happy to leach off of free or employer-
| provided services.
|
| I'm very excited to hopefully find out from public filings just
| how many individuals pay for Claude vs businesses.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Even the best product in the world can come from a company
| whose own valuation is too high.
|
| Anyone is bearish on Nvidia today if the share price would be
| at a $10T valuation.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| Amodei is at the NYT Dealbook Summit today at 1:40 Eastern
| boh wrote:
| Honestly these IPOs are likely to kill the market. Once the
| necessary disclosures are out, and the worse-case math people are
| assuming turns out to have been way more optimistic than the
| actual truth, the entire market is likely crashing since the
| money is so spread out. So far there has been zero good news from
| an investment perspective out of LLM centered companies outside
| of what are ultimately just complex financial engineered
| investments.
| nostrademons wrote:
| If they get into the S&P 500 at a $300B market cap that puts
| them at #30, just behind Coca-Cola. They'll make up about half
| a percent of the index and then will have a ready supply of
| price-insensitive buyers in the form of everybody who puts
| their retirement fund into an index fund on autopilot.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Well they'll hit the requirements for company size and
| country of domicile, but aren't yet at the other
| requirements, of profitability and a minimum of 12 months
| after an IPO so they have a chance of being added.
|
| As to the size of the bump they'll get there isn't a single
| rule of thumb but larger cap companies tend to get a smaller
| bump, which you'd expect. I've seen models estimate a 2-5%
| bump for large companies and a 4-7% bump for mid level and
| 6-12% for "small" under $20 Billion dollar market cap
| companies.
| boh wrote:
| So if things go perfectly--it'll be good. Good to know.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| SP500 is a capitalization* weighted index, hence it is very
| price sensitive.
|
| Everybody who puts their retirement fund into an index fund
| are buying the index fund without relation to the index
| fund's price (aka price insensitive). But the index fund
| itself is buying shares based on each company's relative
| performance, hence the index fund is price sensitive. That is
| evidenced by companies falling out of the SP500 and even
| failing.
|
| *specifically float-adjusted market capitalization
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/index-
| policies/m...
|
| >The goal of float adjustment is to adjust each company's
| total shares outstanding for long-term, strategic
| shareholders, whose holdings are not considered to be
| available to the market.
|
| see also:
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/methodology/article/sp-
| us-...
| nostrademons wrote:
| The S&P 500 is _inversely_ price sensitive, as a
| capitalization-weighted index. Normally you want to buy low
| and sell high. An S &P500 index fund buys more of high-
| priced stocks and sells the low-priced ones, by definition.
| The highest market caps are the stocks with the highest
| prices (adjusted for number of shares outstanding, of
| course).
|
| For most ordinary investors, this doesn't really matter,
| because you put your money into your retirement fund every
| month and you only take it out at retirement. But if you're
| looking at the short term, it absolutely matters. I've
| heard S&P 500 indexing referred to as a momentum investment
| strategy: it buys stocks whose prices are going up, on the
| theory that they will go up more in the future. And there's
| an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy to that, since if
| everybody else is investing in the index fund, they also
| will be buying those same stocks, which will cause them to
| go up even more in the future.
|
| If you want something that buys shares based on each
| company's relative performance, you want a fundamental-
| weighted index. I've looked into that and I found a few
| revenue-weighted index funds, but couldn't find a single
| earnings-weighted index fund, which is what I actually
| want. Recommendations wanted; IMHO the S&P 500 is way
| overvalued on fundamentals and heavily exposed to certain
| fairly bubbly stocks (the Mag-7 alone make up 35% of your
| index fund, and one of them is my employer, and all of them
| employ heavily in my geographic area and are pushing up my
| home value), so I've been looking for a way to diversify
| into companies that actually have solid earnings.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >inversely price sensitive
|
| This isn't a term used in economics. The typical terms
| used are positive price sensitivity and negative price
| sensitivity.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-
| sensitivity.asp
|
| While it is true that being added to the SP500 can lead
| to an increase in demand, and hence cause the index fund
| to pay more for the share, there are evidently opposing
| forces that modulate share prices for companies in the
| SP500.
|
| >I've been looking for a way to diversify into companies
| that actually have solid earnings.
|
| No one has more solid earnings than the top tech
| companies. Assuming you don't work for Tesla, you already
| are doing about the best you can in the US. Your options
| to diversify is to invest in other countries, develop
| your political connections, and possibly get into real
| estate development. Maybe have a bunch of kids.
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/most-profitable-companies/
| skybrian wrote:
| I hope to see it because I want to see their real numbers. If I
| were into gambling, I'd take the opposite side of that bet.
| mNovak wrote:
| So would a $300B Anthropic get included in the SP500?
| kevinqi wrote:
| I think there are profitability requirements, right?
| BJones12 wrote:
| Profitability in both 3 month and 12 month spans. Also
| minimum 12 months of trading history after IPO.
|
| See page ~9 of https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/me
| thodologies/me...
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| How would this work, given that Anthropic is a public benefit
| corporation?
| skizm wrote:
| Etsy was a B-corp at the time of their IPO, so there is some
| precedent.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| IPO makes sense for those who might want to cash out before the
| bubble bursts.
| seydor wrote:
| Now that's the beginning of a bubble worth investing in
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Whatever you think about AI, it is a good that Anthropic go
| public and I argue it's consistent with their mission. It's
| better for the public to have a way to own a piece of the
| company.
|
| In an interview Sam Altman said he preferred to stay away from an
| IPO, but the notion of the public having an interest in the
| company appealed to him. Actions speak louder than words, and so
| it is fitting from a mission standpoint that Anthropic may do it
| first.
| mnort9 wrote:
| It kind of feels like Anthropic needs to IPO before OpenAI.
|
| If OpenAI IPO's first, it'd be huge. Then Anthropic does, but AI
| IPO hype has sailed.
|
| If Anthropic IPO's first, they get the AI IPO hype. OpenAI IPO
| probably huge either way.
| socketcluster wrote:
| Meanwhile I tap bankruptcy lawyers as I race Anthropic and OpenAI
| to stay solvent.
| moffkalast wrote:
| If you spend your last capital on acetone and ethanol reserves
| you might be able to stay solvent for a lot longer.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| I guess the bubble pops the day these IPO
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