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Image Credit: Associated Press<\/p>\n
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Key Points<\/p>\n
Anthropic is reportedly in talks to acquire Decart AI, an AI optimization and world model company, for an estimated $6 billion as it looks to reduce operating costs and improve efficiency.
\n The potential deal comes as Anthropic prepares for an IPO that its investors argue could value the company at $2 trillion or more, potentially making it the largest public-market debut ever.
\n Anthropic\u2019s investors are working to build excitement around the IPO before the company\u2019s financials become public, which could reveal substantial losses.<\/p>\n
Anthropic is on the verge of acquiring Decart AI, a company that increases the efficiency of artificial intelligence (\u201cAI\u201d) chips, as Anthropic seeks to lower operating costs in a brutally competitive market. Anthropic is racing toward what its investors insist will be a $2 trillion initial public offering (\u201cIPO\u201d), and the company needs a compelling story showing how it can get on a path to profitability.<\/p>\n
The deal would be worth about $6 billion, according to Bloomberg, making it the AI lab\u2019s largest acquisition ever. Decart provides optimization software that helps squeeze more performance from chips, lowering the cost of training AI models. The startup also builds \u201cworld models,\u201d a kind of simulation that mimics the real world and helps AI models navigate it effectively.<\/p>\n
Besides the potential to lower costs, the acquisition of Decart could allow Anthropic to serve more users on existing hardware. That may prove useful as AI labs say they\u2019re capacity-constrained by the fast-rising demand for services and the relatively slow build-out of AI data centers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anthropic and its key American rival, OpenAI, face rapidly increasing cost pressures, as low-cost Chinese AI model companies such as DeepSeek and Moonshot churn out high-quality models that may cost just 5% to 10% of what their American rivals charge. As a result, Chinese models have been rapidly growing their market share<\/a>.<\/p>\n OpenAI has responded by slashing prices on one of its newest AI models by up to 80%, a move that threatens to heat up a simmering price war in the industry. OpenAI\u2019s move shows AI labs lack pricing power and threatens the company\u2019s ability to ever go public<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anthropic feels the price pressure as well. As the AI industry\u2019s dynamics rapidly shift and costs become ever more important, Anthropic is rushing its IPO across the finish line. Reports suggest that the company is still targeting an October debut, and it has been touting its sales growth in recent months to keep investors warm for the offering.<\/p>\n Have you ever gone to a restaurant and paid for a meal before you even knew what you\u2019re being served? Of course not, but that\u2019s what a few investors are doing for the Anthropic IPO, trying to attach a $2 trillion price tag to the offering before the public knows what they\u2019re getting.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Financial Times is helping them do it<\/a>. The pink paper quoted a half-dozen Anthropic investors who said the AI lab could hit a $2 trillion valuation for an IPO. That would make Anthropic the largest IPO of all time, surpassing SpaceX\u2019s (SPCX) recent public offering.<\/p>\n Sharp investors should be highly dubious and consider this primarily as an approach to pump the stock of an upcoming IPO:<\/p>\n Anthropic\u2019s backers say booming demand for the lab\u2019s advanced AI models and tools justifies their lofty expectations. Investors expect the Claude maker\u2019s annualised revenue to be between US$100 billion and US$120 billion by the end of 2026 \u2014 using the start-up\u2019s preferred measure, which infers full-year sales from recent performance \u2014 up by more than 10 times over the course of 2026.<\/p>\n Incredibly, the Financial Times goes on to quote one investor who posits a $3 trillion valuation on Anthropic.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s unpack some of what\u2019s happening here.<\/p>\n The $2 trillion IPO valuation is insiders\u2019 price target. Insiders are trying to normalize a $2 trillion figure for the investing public, so it looks reasonable. A $3 trillion valuation, also tossed around, helps make $2 trillion look less extreme.<\/p>\n The public is being fed this info by highly interested insiders.This valuation data is being fed to the media by insiders who have an investment interest of millions to billions in an Anthropic IPO, so they want to use the largest number possible.<\/p>\n No detailed financial information is public yet. Anthropic\u2019s financial info remains high-level in this FT article, so the public can\u2019t clearly know what it would get for $2 trillion. How much money is Anthropic losing, and what is its trend toward profitability?<\/p>\n Annualized revenue is not defined. While insiders provide a target for annualized revenue, the formula isn\u2019t clearly defined. A guess might be that it\u2019s 12 times the last month\u2019s revenue, but that is not really clear. This lack of clarity works well for those who want the investing public to be ready to buy the IPO stock at any price.<\/p>\n Annualized revenue is not revenue.Annualizing revenue is a forecast of what revenue would look like over the course of a year. So it\u2019s not a statement of realized revenue, as the figures on financial statements filed by publicly traded companies are. For a high-growth company, annualized revenue will generally look much higher than actual revenue.<\/p>\n In short, the Financial Times is offering readers the best possible image of Anthropic \u2013 full of make-up, doused with perfume, and with a photo filter on. The point of this kind of \u201cmedia plant\u201d is to get the investing public excited about AI as \u201cthe wave of the future,\u201d so that it uncritically buys whatever the big investors are selling BEFORE they see the financials.<\/p>\n And if OpenAI\u2019s financials are anything to go by<\/a>, Anthropic could be burning cash at a fearsome rate.<\/p>\n