Anthropic is a pure play in what appears to be the faltering AI space. At least SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) has a rocket and an internet division. Recently, it became clear that at least some large corporations are willing to take slightly less AI firepower than Anthropic offers. And, by the way, Anthropic has tens of millions of dollars of obligations for data centers and Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) chips. (For some reason, Nvidia always seems to come out on top in all of these transactions.)
A large group of investors believes an Anthropic IPO will top the record set by SpaceX. The main reasons are revenue and the fact that AI may be the most important invention in human history.
Anthropic is outpacing its rivals’ revenue run rates, which is one reason it is such a hot investment. The estimated run rate for this year is $65 billion; OpenAI’s is as low as $40 billion based on the same calculation. The primary reason is corporate and institutional adoption. Anthropic’s Claude has become the industry leader. Investors don’t want to see individuals running Claude on their laptops. They want to see its AI functions at the world’s largest companies because that is where the real money is. But the FT recently ran a headline that read, “Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive.” This happens at the same time inexpensive Chinese models are rushing into the market.
No one could have anticipated this Chinese surge even a year ago. Only days ago, newspapers reported that Anthropic has also largely dodged the concern that AI is just too expensive, even for large companies. However, some others have said the investment has not yielded a strong ROI and have cut back spending, at least temporarily. For “temporarily” to go away, AI ROI has to improve significantly.
The SpaceX IPO gave the company a valuation of $1.77 trillion on the first trading day, and it raised $86 billion. That money is disappearing quickly and has gone to the SpaceX xAI division.
So why the enthusiasm for Anthropic compared to SpaceX? SpaceX has the rocket business cornered. Its Starlink should become the de facto internet access for most of the world. However, its AI business is not attractive, even a little. Even with capex of $18.4 billion in the most recent quarter, it is not enough. Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, said the capex sum must be much, much bigger. He needs more and more AI data center capacity. However, his models benchmark much behind those from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, at least. And then,, again, there are the Chinese.
But if you look at the bets an investor takes, a shareholder in SpaceX is betting on three divisions. An investor in Anthropic is only looking at one.
Anthropic is an AI pure play, the sector’s consensus leader. SpaceX was a rocket and internet business with an AI business bolted on. That means that the IPO value of SpaceX won’t be topped by Anthropic.
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