Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Anthropic Hits One Trillion Overtaking OpenAI
Transcript
- 0:00Anthropic's implied valuation on private secondary markets,
- 0:03specifically on platforms like Forge Global, has officially
- 0:06touched $1 trillion, overtaking Open AI.
- 0:10Right. And that valuation, it comes
- 0:13entirely from secondary market trading.
- 0:16OK. So for anyone trying to grasp
- 0:18the mechanics here, existing shareholders are basically
- 0:21selling their private stakes to new, usually institutional,
- 0:25buyers. Yeah.
- 0:26So it's not a direct investment into the company.
- 0:28Exactly. This is fundamentally different
- 0:30from a primary funding round where the company itself
- 0:33actually issues new shares to raise capital.
- 0:35We're going to look at how a company focused purely on
- 0:37business software completely outpaced the creator of the most
- 0:41famous consumer artificial intelligence allocation, right?
- 0:44And we will also exlore the unique mechanics driving these
- 0:47private trades, plus the really unconventional ways everyday
- 0:50investors are trying to get a piece of the action.
- 0:53So how does a business with a fraction of the consumer user
- 0:55base justify a higher market value and generate more revenue
- 0:58than its biggest rival? Well, Anthropic shares are
- 1:01trading at that implied $1 trillion on Forge Global right
- 1:05now. Meanwhile, Open AI is trading
- 1:08lower, basically lingering near its last official primary
- 1:12funding valuation. The demand for Anthropic is, I
- 1:16mean it is so intense that buyers are literally offering
- 1:20physical real estate as collateral just to secure
- 1:23shares. Wow, real estate.
- 1:24Yeah, you have these massive institutional investors and
- 1:28highly capitalized family offices, and they are just
- 1:32scrambling to acquire equity from absolutely anyone willing
- 1:35to sell. Right, they just want in.
- 1:36Exactly, they are leveraging hard physical assets to make the
- 1:41math work for these secondary brokers.
- 1:43It is a completely aggressive posture from the buying side.
- 1:46And that you know, that creates a severe supply and demand
- 1:49imbalance in the market. You have to understand the
- 1:51psychology and the financial reality of the employees and
- 1:54early investors who are actually holding these shares.
- 1:56Yeah, because they're on the inside.
- 1:58Exactly. They look at their internal
- 1:59dashboards, they see the underlying revenue growth
- 2:02trajectory, and because they see that data, they fundamentally
- 2:05refuse to sell. I mean, why would you, right?
- 2:07Right. So that creates a market with
- 2:09virtually 0 active sellers, but an endless line of buyers
- 2:14holding giant checks. When a broker does manage to
- 2:17find like a a block of shares, they are inundated with
- 2:21competing offers almost instantly.
- 2:23The bidding wars are frantic. But then you look at open AI
- 2:27secondary market and it's experiencing the exact opposite
- 2:30sentiment. Oh totally.
- 2:32They have seen a ratio of five sellers to everyone buyer. 5:00
- 2:36to 1:00. Yeah, 5 sellers for every buyer.
- 2:39That creates a very tepid market for their shares.
- 2:42Bids are coming in below their last official valuation, but
- 2:45Entropic shares are purchased within hours of being listed on
- 2:48these exact same platforms. You really to wonder about the
- 2:50mechanics of how these platforms even function when the demand is
- 2:53that skewed. Think about a rare art auction.
- 2:57Imagine the few owners of pieces by a highly coveted artist
- 3:01simply refused to part with. Them right, they just lock them
- 3:03in a vault. Exactly, they will not sell
- 3:05under any circumstances. That refusal artificially Dr.
- 3:08the perceived price up for the tiny fraction of pieces that do,
- 3:11you know, eventually become available.
- 3:13Because everyone wants the one piece that's out there.
- 3:15Yeah, the scarcity itself becomes the primary driver of
- 3:18the premium. When there was practically no
- 3:21floating supply of an asset, the marginal buyer, the one person
- 3:26willing to pay the absolute highest price, they set the new
- 3:29price floor for the entire asset class.
- 3:31I am curious though, how much of this is based on real
- 3:35technological superiority versus just extreme fear of missing
- 3:39out? That's the big question.
- 3:40Right, because you have venture capital funds who feel they
- 3:43absolutely need exposure to the hottest artificial intelligence
- 3:46company just to satisfy their own limited partners.
- 3:49The motivation and certainly blends both genuine
- 3:51technological belief and intense financial pressure, but the
- 3:55confidence of this behavior is completely undeniable.
- 3:58This frenzy really alters the perception of leadership in the
- 4:02artificial intelligence race. It shifts the focus.
- 4:04Exactly. The private market is heavily
- 4:07rewarding enterprise momentum over consumer brand recognition.
- 4:12Institutional capital is sending a clear signal that deep
- 4:15business to business integration is fundamentally more valuable
- 4:19than having a household name chatbot that everyday people use
- 4:22for trivia. I think we need to step back for
- 4:24a second. We are talking about private A
- 4:27liquid shares here, not public stock.
- 4:29You can just trade from your phone.
- 4:30True, but looking at the numbers, Anthropic surpassed
- 4:34Open AI and annualized revenue run rate hitting $30 billion
- 4:38compared to Open AI $24 billion. That revenue flip happened
- 4:42incredibly fast, and the underlying economics explain
- 4:45exactly why Anthropic monetizes at roughly $211.00 per user.
- 4:50Wait 211. Yeah, per user.
- 4:52Compare that to Open AI's $25 per user.
- 4:56And beyond that, Anthropic boasts over 500 individual
- 4:59customers who are spending more than $1 million annually.
- 5:02Oh. Wow.
- 5:02So it's heavily enterprise. Exactly.
- 5:04They are securing massive long term enterprise contracts.
- 5:09Those contracts guarantee consistent capital inflows
- 5:12rather than just hoping consumers renew a monthly
- 5:15subscription. Wait, back up.
- 5:17How does a software company jump from 9 billion to 30 billion in
- 5:20annualized revenue in a single quarter?
- 5:23That math is wild. That gross is driven almost
- 5:27entirely by high value enterprise API contracts and
- 5:31intense developer adoption. They're not relying on
- 5:34individuals paying $20.00 a month to ask a chat bot to write
- 5:37a recipe or, you know, draft a polite e-mail to their boss.
- 5:40Right, the consumer stuff. Yeah, they are integrating their
- 5:42systems directly into the back end workflows.
- 5:45The Fortune 10. Imagine you were running a
- 5:47global logistics company. You do not buy a chat bot, you
- 5:51purchase guaranteed server throughput.
- 5:53Because you need reliability. Exactly.
- 5:55You pay per token to process massive, endless volumes of
- 5:59proprietary corporate data securely within your own
- 6:01firewalls. Every single time your internal
- 6:04software makes a routing decision, it calls their API and
- 6:07they charge you a fraction of a cent.
- 6:08Multiply that by billions of operations.
- 6:11Picture the difference between selling a fleet of commercial
- 6:13jets to International Airlines versus selling millions of
- 6:17bicycles to individual commuters.
- 6:19That's a great way to put it, right?
- 6:20The absolute volume of individual users matters
- 6:23significantly less than the contract size and the stickiness
- 6:26of the product within a corporate infrastructure.
- 6:29A business user utilizing an API for their core supply chain
- 6:32operations has a significantly higher lifetime value and a much
- 6:37lower churn rate than a casual consumer testing out
- 6:39conversational software. This proves consumer virality is
- 6:43absolutely not the only path to massive software revenue.
- 6:47It fully validates the business to business enterprise model as
- 6:50the most lucrative route in this entire sector.
- 6:52Yeah, definitely. Getting to 100 million users the
- 6:55fastest was a phenomenal headline for consumer apps.
- 6:58But deeply embedding your models into the software that actually
- 7:01runs global finance, healthcare systems and logistics networks?
- 7:05Well, that is what generates $30 billion in highly reliable
- 7:08recurring revenue. And you know, a specific
- 7:11developer tool called Claude Code is generating 2 1/2 billion
- 7:15dollars in annualized revenue all by itself.
- 7:17Just that one tool. Just that one.
- 7:20That ejectic coding tool is now authoring a significant
- 7:23percentage of all public code commits on GitHub, with internal
- 7:27projections showing it could handle 1/5 of all commits
- 7:29globally. 1/5 That is unbelievable.
- 7:33We are looking at a single developer product that scaled
- 7:35from zero to multibillion dollar revenue in a matter of months.
- 7:40Entire engineering teams at major corporations are utilizing
- 7:43this tool to automate their routine coding tasks, completely
- 7:47debug complex legacy systems, and heavily accelerate their
- 7:51entire software deployment pipeline.
- 7:53See, I look at that and see a massive concentration risk.
- 7:56Really. How so?
- 7:57While relying so heavily on a single product category like
- 8:00coding assistance makes the overall company highly
- 8:03vulnerable, if well funded competitors release highly
- 8:07capable open source alternatives, that entire 2 1/2
- 8:10billion dollar revenue stream could evaporate overnight.
- 8:13You think they would switch that fast?
- 8:14Absolutely. An enterprise client will
- 8:16happily switch to a free or heavily discounted alternative
- 8:20if the performance gap between the tools narrows.
- 8:23Code generation is actively becoming commoditized.
- 8:26I disagree completely with that assessment.
- 8:28Developer tools have the highest switching costs in the entire
- 8:32software industry. But if it's cheaper.
- 8:34Doesn't matter. Once you have a development team
- 8:36integrate an agent decoder into their daily deployment cycle, it
- 8:40becomes entirely entrenched. You establish your core security
- 8:43protocols around this specific tool.
- 8:45You spend months trading your software engineers on its highly
- 8:48specific nuances and prompting structures.
- 8:51I guess the training does take time.
- 8:53It takes a lot of time. It creates the deepest possible
- 8:55entrenchment in enterprise workflows.
- 8:58Removing that tool disrupts your entire engineering pipeline and
- 9:02completely kills internal productivity.
- 9:04No chief technology officer will risk halting their product road
- 9:07map just to save a few $1,000,000 on software licenses.
- 9:10That dynamic absolutely shifts the focus of modern software
- 9:14development. Then developer focused tools are
- 9:17actively establishing themselves as the most profitable layer of
- 9:21the new software stack. Exactly.
- 9:23This opens up entirely new categories of enterprise
- 9:26spending. You are seeing chief technology
- 9:29officers aggressively reallocating massive budgets
- 9:32from other departments just to equip their engineers with these
- 9:36specific capabilities. The return on investment in pure
- 9:39labor efficiency is undeniable. If a tool makes your engineering
- 9:42team 20% faster, you pay whatever the vendor ask.
- 9:46And here's another wild Stat Anthropic project spending four
- 9:49times less on model training than open AI.
- 9:51Four times less. Yeah, Open AI is projected to
- 9:54spend over $120 billion on compute over the coming years,
- 9:58while Anthropic projects their spend at around 30 billion.
- 10:01That is a massive gap. It is, and because of this
- 10:04disciplined spending and highly focused engineering strategy,
- 10:08anthropic projects reaching actual profitability much
- 10:11sooner. They are optimizing their model
- 10:13architectures to achieve top tier reasoning capabilities
- 10:17without requiring the same brute force computational power that
- 10:20their competitors rely on. Hold on, does spending less
- 10:24naturally mean their models will eventually fall behind in
- 10:26performance? Not necessarily.
- 10:29I mean, the entire industry currently assumes pure size and
- 10:32scale are the only mathematical ways to achieve advanced
- 10:36intelligence. Cutting costs on training runs
- 10:39seems like a guaranteed recipe for losing the capability race
- 10:42in the long run. Anthropic is aggressively
- 10:44testing the assumption that the company spending the absolute
- 10:46most on training automatically wins the market.
- 10:49So they think there's a smarter way.
- 10:51Right. They are betting heavily that
- 10:53algorithmic efficiency, high quality synthetic data
- 10:56generation, and highly specialized model routing matter
- 11:00significantly more than just raw compute volume.
- 11:04They believe they can match or exceed competitor performance
- 11:07through smarter, highly targeted engineering rather than just
- 11:12buying more graphics processing units and plugging them into the
- 11:15wall. I am still highly skeptical of
- 11:17the math on the other side of that equation.
- 11:20You have to wonder if these companies are just throwing
- 11:22billions of dollars into a bottomless pit.
- 11:25It definitely looks like that sometimes.
- 11:26Building an artificial intelligence model right now
- 11:29feels exactly like building a massive, highly expensive
- 11:32highway system before knowing exactly how how many cars will
- 11:35actually use it. You commit 10s of billions of
- 11:37dollars to massive data centers, cooling systems, and specialized
- 11:41silicon chips just hoping the resulting model produces enough
- 11:44commercial value to justify the massive capital expenditure.
- 11:47That changes how institutional investors evaluate these
- 11:50companies entirely, though. Financial success is
- 11:53increasingly measured by who can generate the most revenue per
- 11:56single dollar of training spend, rather than who simply builds
- 12:01the biggest underlying model with the most parameters.
- 12:04It's all about efficiency now. Think about the pure math of it.
- 12:07If you spend $100 billion just to train a single model, your
- 12:11revenue requirements to reach free cash flow are
- 12:14astronomically high. Capital efficiency is rapidly
- 12:17becoming the defining metric for long term survival in this
- 12:20specific sector. Let's talk about where that
- 12:22money is coming from. Major technology giants provide
- 12:26enormous funding to artificial intelligence startups, who then
- 12:29turn around and use that exact same money to buy cloud
- 12:32computing services from those exact same tech giants.
- 12:35It's quite the loop. Amazon and Google have made
- 12:37multibillion dollar investments directly into Empropic.
- 12:40And that creates a highly constrained circular financing
- 12:43loop. Amazon invest billions of
- 12:45dollars into the startups bank account, but Anthropic
- 12:48explicitly commits to using Amazon Web Services for its
- 12:51massive compute needs to train and serve its models.
- 12:55So the money just goes right back.
- 12:56Yeah, the capital effectively never leaves the corporate
- 12:59ecosystem. It is simply reclassified from
- 13:02an investment asset on the balance sheet to cloud computing
- 13:06revenue on the income statement. Big Tech gives them money and
- 13:09they hand that money right back to big tech to rent servers.
- 13:13It's that simple. It operates exactly like a
- 13:15commercial landlord, giving a tenant a large cash loan
- 13:19specifically so the tenant can pay the monthly rent directly
- 13:22back to the landlord. That sounds incredibly fragile.
- 13:25You have to strongly question the long term health of this
- 13:28financial dynamic. If the underlying enterprise
- 13:31return on investment does not materialize for the actual end
- 13:34user buying the software, this entire closed loop could
- 13:37collapse entirely. The major cloud providers are
- 13:40heavily subsidizing the artificial intelligence boom
- 13:43specifically to drive their own infrastructure growth metrics
- 13:46for Wall Street. This arrangement completely
- 13:49limits the true independence of these artificial intelligence
- 13:52startups, but I guess it absolutely ensures their short
- 13:55term survival. They couldn't survive without
- 13:57it. It guarantees immediate access
- 13:59to crucial computing infrastructure.
- 14:02Without these highly strategic partnerships, securing the
- 14:05necessary gigawatts of electrical power and hundreds of
- 14:08thousands of specialized chips would be mathematically
- 14:11impossible for an independent startup.
- 14:13They are trading complete autonomy for access to the only
- 14:16machines capable of running their software.
- 14:18Now here's a really strange angle.
- 14:20Zoom Video Communications owns a stake in Anthropic that could be
- 14:24worth up to $10 billion. Wait, Zoom, the video call
- 14:28company. Yeah, Zoom, they made an early
- 14:31$51 million investment directly into Anthropic.
- 14:34Even factoring in the heavy share dilution from subsequent
- 14:37massive funding rounds, a 1% stake in a trillion dollar
- 14:40company mathematically equals $10 billion.
- 14:43That is wild. Buying Zoom stock right now
- 14:47operates as a brilliant, highly asymmetric bet on Anthropics
- 14:50future success. Zoom is currently sitting on
- 14:53nearly $8 billion in cash and short term investments with
- 14:56absolutely zero debt. So it's like a backdoor.
- 14:59Exactly. If you buy Zoom equity, you are
- 15:02effectively getting Zoom Score video conferencing business
- 15:06completely for free, simply given their cash reserves and
- 15:10the enormous paper value of that artificial intelligence equity I
- 15:13have. To push back on the idea that
- 15:14this is a safe investment vehicle, though, yeah, Zoom
- 15:17Score business faces extreme competition and steadily
- 15:20declining growth. Sure, but the cash buffer?
- 15:23But think about it. The permanent shift in hybrid
- 15:26work models combined with intense pressure from bundled
- 15:29enterprise software solutions like Microsoft Teams puts heavy
- 15:33downward pressure on their enterprise retention metrics.
- 15:36That is a fairpoint that makes it a highly risky vehicle just
- 15:39to hold an artificial intelligence lottery ticket.
- 15:41If Zoom's enterprise market share arose further, the equity
- 15:45value of the core business will drag down the entire stock price
- 15:48completely, regardless of what the underlying anthropic stake
- 15:52is actually worth. I see what you mean, but this
- 15:54opens up a highly creative strategy for everyday retail
- 15:56investors to gain exposure to private market darlings.
- 16:00They do not need the legal accreditation or the massive
- 16:03capital required to buy private shares directly.
- 16:05They just buy Zoom instead, right?
- 16:07Retail investors are actively hunting for publicly traded
- 16:10proxies to capture the financial upside of companies that remain
- 16:14strictly locked behind private venture capital doors.
- 16:18They are looking for any backdoor entry into the wealth
- 16:21creation event. And some are going even further.
- 16:24Tokenized Anthropic shares are actively trading on
- 16:27cryptocurrency platforms, implying an $850 billion
- 16:31valuation. The crypto angle is fascinating.
- 16:34These highly experimental decentralized pre stocks trade
- 16:37on networks like Solana, theoretically allowing everyday
- 16:40retail participants to speculate directly on the private market
- 16:43valuation. But there is a critical
- 16:45structural flaw in that specific trading system.
- 16:49A retail trader made over $1 million in pure paper profit
- 16:53trading these tokens, but they cannot actually cash out due to
- 16:57a severe lack of market liquidity.
- 16:58Wait so they have $1,000,000 on screen but can't touch it?
- 17:01Exactly when they actively attempted to simulate selling
- 17:04their position across various decentralized exchanges, the
- 17:08financial slippage was massive. There were simply no actual
- 17:11buyers sitting on the other side of the trade at that specific
- 17:14price point. Wait, let me understand this
- 17:16fully. People are purchasing digital
- 17:18tokens that represent private shares, but they do not actually
- 17:22own the underlying shares at all.
- 17:24Right. They are purely bearer digital
- 17:26assets. They carry absolutely no legal
- 17:28voting rights. They provide 0 direct ownership
- 17:31in the company itself. So what are?
- 17:33They they are highly complex synthetic instruments explicitly
- 17:36designed just to track the price of the underlying private asset.
- 17:40They are managed by highly obscure special purpose vehicles
- 17:44that hold the actual legal paperwork offline.
- 17:46You are basically holding a winning lottery ticket in a
- 17:49jurisdiction where you cannot legally claim the financial
- 17:52prize. The numbers look phenomenal on a
- 17:54digital screen and the implied valuation creates highly
- 17:57clickable headlines, but the actual real world financial
- 18:01value is effectively 0 if you cannot mathematically convert
- 18:04those digital tokens back into usable Fiat currency.
- 18:07Yeah, the liquidity trap is absolute.
- 18:10This completely limits the actual value of the synthetic
- 18:13assets. It heavily highlights the
- 18:15extreme, highly risky lengths everyday retail investors will
- 18:19go to for any exposure to the artificial intelligence
- 18:22financial boom. People just want in so badly.
- 18:25The pure desperation to participate in this specific
- 18:28wealth creation event is driving retail capital into highly
- 18:31experimental and intensely illiquid financial structures.
- 18:35People are buying complex derivatives just to feel like
- 18:38they are participating. And all this pressure is
- 18:41building up to something both Open AI and Anthropic are
- 18:45aggressively preparing for initial public offerings heavily
- 18:48driven by competitive market dynamics and mounting employee
- 18:52stock options. There is an intense internal
- 18:54pressure cooker building inside these exact companies.
- 18:58Thousands of highly paid engineers and researchers are
- 19:00holding illiquid stock options that strictly vest over a four
- 19:03year period, the standard one year Cliff.
- 19:06And they want their money. Of course they do.
- 19:08These individuals have generated billions in theoretical paper
- 19:12value. They naturally want to realize
- 19:14the actual financial gains of their incredibly hard work to
- 19:17buy homes and permanently secure their personal financial
- 19:20futures. Investment banks predict these
- 19:22eventual public market offerings will heavily exceed $60 billion
- 19:27in raised capital. The scramble among major global
- 19:30financial institutions to secure the rights to underwrite these
- 19:33listings is intensely competitive.
- 19:36I fully believe the public markets will eagerly absorb
- 19:39these specific offerings simply due to the pure revenue growth
- 19:42velocity we discussed earlier. You think so?
- 19:44Yeah. When massive mutual funds,
- 19:47global pension funds and everyday retail investors
- 19:49finally secure a direct mechanism to buy the companies
- 19:52actively defining the next computing platform, the capital
- 19:55inflow will be absolutely staggering.
- 19:58The public market is entirely starved for pureplay artificial
- 20:01intelligence infrastructure stocks.
- 20:03I completely disagree with that outlook because public markets
- 20:06strictly demand clear, mathematically sound paths to
- 20:10free cash flow. Wall Street analysts will
- 20:13absolutely not stomach revenue multiples of 27 times or higher
- 20:17for companies that are actively burning billions of dollars
- 20:20every single month on raw server costs.
- 20:23But the growth is unprecedented. The transition from private
- 20:27venture markets to public markets involves a highly brutal
- 20:30shift in financial valuation metrics.
- 20:32Private venture capitalists value exponential top line user
- 20:36growth above all else. Public market analysts strictly
- 20:40demand highly sustainable operating margins and incredibly
- 20:43clear profitability timelines. This sets up the absolute
- 20:47ultimate test for the entire artificial intelligence
- 20:49industry. Then the harsh transition from
- 20:52private venture capital logic to strict public market scrutiny
- 20:56will completely force these specific companies to legally
- 20:59prove their underlying business models are highly sustainable.
- 21:02Not to show the math works. They will have to mathematically
- 21:04demonstrate that they can sell digital intelligence to
- 21:06enterprise clients at a strictly higher margin than it natively
- 21:10cost to generate it on their hardware.
- 21:12So tying this all together, the competition between artificial
- 21:15intelligence leaders has entirely shifted from consumer
- 21:19popularity contest to a ruthless focus on enterprise revenue
- 21:22efficiency, strategic cloud partnerships, and intense
- 21:26private market maneuvering. If the physical hardware and
- 21:29daily compute costs continue to rise exponentially, will these
- 21:33trillion dollar valuations hold up when the public markets
- 21:36finally demand actual sustainable profit margins?
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