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Brad Olsen: Infometrics Principal Economist on Anthropic going public · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks be follow
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  Speaker 2: Anthropic. Anthropic is a company that made claud Ai colud
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  Speaker 2: Ai they say is going to be the best Ai
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  Speaker 2: of the lot. This company, Anthropic, is going public. You
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  Speaker 2: can buy shares. It's filed confidential plans for a public offering,
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  Speaker 2: although no details around the shares or the share prices
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  Speaker 2: have been confirmed. This would be the most anticipated market
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  Speaker 2: debut in years. The company's valuation is currently sitting at
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  Speaker 2: nine hundred and sixty five billion dollars. They could fund
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  Speaker 2: Mawana Pacific after just twenty minutes work anyway, Informatric's chief
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  Speaker 2: executive and principal economist, Brad Olsen joins us. Now, good afternoon, Brad.
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  Speaker 2: This is massive.
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  Speaker 3: It's absolutely huge, although it's also a bit of a
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  Speaker 3: race at the moment. You've got Anthropic have filed this
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  Speaker 3: confidential IPO detail today, You've got open Ai who want
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  Speaker 3: to file their own IPO paperwork in the coming you know,
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  Speaker 3: days or weeks. Effectively, whoever gets there first, whoever sort
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  Speaker 3: of can you know, bankroll things and get things moving
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  Speaker 3: on the stock market is probably going to I guess
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  Speaker 3: set a bit of a bit of the market expectations
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  Speaker 3: and conditions for these AI companies going forward. And so
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  Speaker 3: really Anthropic's got a little bit of an early win
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  Speaker 3: on the board by getting its paperwork in getting things moving.
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  Speaker 3: Doesn't have to give any of that detail yet around
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  Speaker 3: exactly what number it's looking for and how the shares
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  Speaker 3: and everything will work, but getting all the due diligence
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  Speaker 3: done in the background. But if this comes off, probably
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  Speaker 3: when it comes off, it will be huge, but there
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  Speaker 3: will also be huge expectations riding on it going well,
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  Speaker 3: because if it doesn't, I think people will start to
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  Speaker 3: worry that the AI bubble might be about to burst.
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  Speaker 2: Well, this is my question. I mean, why wouldn't they
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  Speaker 2: do this much earlier in the company's history, Because, of course,
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  Speaker 2: we've had so much talk about the AI bubble, that
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  Speaker 2: the entire sector has become overvalued, that investors have got
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  Speaker 2: overly excited that AI is going to change the world,
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  Speaker 2: and that prices are already inflated. So you could argue
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  Speaker 2: that Anthropic has realized this and thought of we're going
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  Speaker 2: to make a lot of money from an ipo. This
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  Speaker 2: is the time, because it might not happen in the future,
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  Speaker 2: because isn't it trouble with the government wanting to regulate them?
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  Speaker 3: Well, yes, I've got in the fight a couple of
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  Speaker 3: months back, of course, with Donald Trump's administration and the
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  Speaker 3: wider Pentagon they wanted to the US government wanted to
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  Speaker 3: use Anthropic and a bunch of other AI tools as
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  Speaker 3: part of their sort of defense and military operations. There
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  Speaker 3: was quite a disagreement over just what controls might need
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  Speaker 3: to be incorporated there. Depending on sort of which court
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  Speaker 3: you go to, it's either totally fine or totally not fine.
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  Speaker 3: And so again, as usual in the American system, they're
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  Speaker 3: going through the legal processes. But the factors anthropics AI
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  Speaker 3: tools have become very much market leading. You've seen particular
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  Speaker 3: on their ability to support coding outcomes and sort of
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  Speaker 3: cowork outcomes for non technical operators. That sort of stuff
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  Speaker 3: really has just sort of blitzed the rest of the competition.
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  Speaker 3: You'll remember, of course, Open Ai when they came out
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  Speaker 3: with chat, GPT and similar was driving a lot more activity.
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  Speaker 3: In recent times, the open Ai figures have started to
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  Speaker 3: drop back. They haven't been making quite as much money
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  Speaker 3: as had been anticipated, and Thropics been moving forward a
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  Speaker 3: lot more than that, particularly focused on enterprise software. But
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  Speaker 3: you're right, the big challenge at the moment is that
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  Speaker 3: all of this hype has come through, but now the
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  Speaker 3: sort of rubber is heading the road, where in particular,
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  Speaker 3: you've seen a lot of these AI companies that previously
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  Speaker 3: sort of just charged everyone a set fee per month.
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  Speaker 3: Now it's moving to more token based pricing, and that
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  Speaker 3: sort of hit on the pricing front is starting to
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  Speaker 3: hit a lot of corporates. Uber for example, spent its
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  Speaker 3: entire AI budget for a year in just four months
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  Speaker 3: and basically had to say we can't spend anything more.
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  Speaker 3: So with that sort of pricing tension starting to come in,
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  Speaker 3: there are questions around will these AI companies be able
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  Speaker 3: to make as much money money in the future, and
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  Speaker 3: that is raising questions around the eventual valuation of these companies.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I gave it away for free at first, and
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  Speaker 2: that was to hook a certain and then they have
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  Speaker 2: to start charging for it, and then chat GBT starts
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  Speaker 2: lying to us, and so you know that's not great. Look,
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  Speaker 2: you're an educated man. They're worth nine hundred and sixty
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  Speaker 2: five billion dollars. How much is a share? Do you think, well,
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  Speaker 2: how much is.
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  Speaker 1: It going to cost?
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  Speaker 3: Well, this is you just don't know. Because one of
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  Speaker 3: the other big challenges you've got with these sort of
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  Speaker 3: big tech companies is often they have a very complicated
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  Speaker 3: share structure so that those who are already in the
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  Speaker 3: company that have you done a lot of the hard yards,
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  Speaker 3: they reap a lot of the rewards. So they often have,
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  Speaker 3: you know, sort of a two tier structure so that
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  Speaker 3: there's an inability for you know, just regular punters like
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  Speaker 3: yourself and me going in buying some shares trying to
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  Speaker 3: unseat whoever's at the top of the company. You saw
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  Speaker 3: that recently with Elon Musk his sort of IPO that
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  Speaker 3: he did with his company's Xai and similar recently basically
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  Speaker 3: made it so there was a two tier system so
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  Speaker 3: that most people could buy in, but they couldn't really
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  Speaker 3: control that much of the company, which of course means
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  Speaker 3: you don't get as much financial reward either. So there's
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  Speaker 3: a real sort of I think question over how complex
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  Speaker 3: the structure might be. But also that fact of when
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  Speaker 3: you've got so many of these big companies coming on
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  Speaker 3: at once, will there actually be enough demand? Will people
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  Speaker 3: want to pay for this stuff? Or will they have
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  Speaker 3: already sort of spent their money and gone, look, I
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  Speaker 3: don't have any left over at the moment. I'm not
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  Speaker 3: going to continue to sort of just pitch in. And
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  Speaker 3: so there's that again first mover advantage. Whoever gets over
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  Speaker 3: the line first probably will dictate the entire outcome for
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  Speaker 3: the AI sector.
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  Speaker 2: Now racing this time, and I thank you. That is
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  Speaker 2: Brad Olsen, of course, Inframetric's chief executive and principal economists
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  Speaker 2: on the potential IPO of Anthropic.
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