6 ms·

Anthropic has a great product, but what's going on in the stock market is astonishing. Companies waiting to be valued at a trillion dollars before going public?

Anthropic has a great product, but what's going on in the stock market is astonishing. Companies waiting to be valued at a trillion dollars before going public? (I'm writing this comment with the assumption that they will go public soon and the valuation will be higher than this $965 billion dollar private valuation) The stock market used to be a place for companies to raise money from investors. But that isn't what it is anymore, it's a dumping ground. Venture capitalists & private investors are sucking all of the possible growth and future upside from these companies and then dumping them on retail investors when there's nothing left. There is no growth or upside left by the time these companies go public. If you invest in these IPOs you are buying the absolute peak with all potential future profits baked into the price, with nowhere left to go but down.

onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago
> But that isn't what it is anymore, it's a dumping ground. We got "dumped" Google and Facebook, so... Those probably made up for all the other "dumps". We also got "dumped" TSLA, which is meme-ing in the trillions at the moment. You can short Anthropic at IPO if you want...
- NewJazz 4mo ago
  Google IPO 20 years ago, Tesla 15 years ago, facebook almost 15 years ago. Situations change.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago
    When did they change? 3 years and 4 months ago? 1 year ago? 8 years? Because when Facebook IPO'd everyone was saying the stock market was a dumping ground... Same with Google... Same with Pets.com and WebVan...
    - Npovview 4mo ago
      Few Pheonix(s) rise from the ashes of many Unicorns.
    - pixelatedindex 4mo ago
      Sometimes when things change in an insidious manner, it’s hard to point out _when_ the decline started.
  - signatoremo 4mo ago
    Maybe but can you elaborate what the changes are?
  - icedchai 4mo ago
    "This time it's different", right?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- surgical_fire 4mo ago
  Or he can just steer clear of the eventual Anthropic stock. Shorting is not the only strategy available to avoid losing money. But you, of course, can buy on their IPO. They need every bagholder they can get :)
- halamadrid 4mo ago
  Looking back it feels like GOOG, FB, TSLA etc. all went IPO at reasonable valuations. Retail & public investors did benefit long term and continuing to get higher valuations in public is not a small feat compared to a VC valuation. A trillion dollar valuation seemed so hard back in the day and now there are so many companies in that list. What's the next level? Is this just signs that $ is no longer the inflating at the same rate over time and its the realistic inflation that is reflecting in the stock market? Prices of all goods surely has to follow to make up for the revenue needed to sustain these valuations and also the salaries to sustain the prices. Unfortunately, those who are not in the loop is not going to have a good time.
  - ml_basics 4mo ago
    maybe we will look back and also think that the current slate of IPOs were reasonable valuations?
    - lumost 4mo ago
      The critical view is that these IPOs are bumping up against physics. How many trillion dollar companies can the economy support? The US GDP is roughly 32 Trillion. A company with 100 billion dollars in revenue and 10x annual growth would be expected to increase the size of the economy by 3.2% in its first year, and about 30% in it's second year post IPO existing. While we could claim that such a company can grow by consuming a larger share of the GDP ... this would not bode well for future political stability, and nationalization would be a major topic. So your left with a fast take off scenario, a job apocalypse, or a massively reduced growth rate.
      - fittingopposite 4mo ago
        Wait for more inflation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R...
      - adammarples 4mo ago
        If Anthropic has anything line that level of success, it will also be at the expense of huge unemployment, because Claude is really competing with knowledge work
taude 4mo ago
Yeup, no shortage of tech IPOs over the past five years that are now valued at like 5% of what they were after being dumped onto the market: ZoomInfo, Bumble, Gemini And many more that are 50% of what they were: Snowflake, Coinbase And many more that went back to private companies and then were sold off: Carbon Black, etc... I'm actually too lazy to go list out all of them. But employees, beware, of those gnarly lockup periods post IPO where all the better classed options than yours get to exit.
- pas 4mo ago
  ... still, "on average" IPOs tend to make money, no? that's why people (fight to be able) to buy them. this gives a nice comfy exit to many late-stage investors, etc. and, of course, it's hard to say that it's great that these companies are mere shadows of themselves post-IPO, but also it's impossible to non-misleadingly assess each IPO as if they were in a vacuum. obviously Coinbase is/was a stupid venture, but at the same time it was a pretty good bet at the time. and the same stands for a lot of these.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - executivevice 4mo ago
    > Approximately 56% to 60% of U.S. initial public offerings (IPOs) lose absolute value over a five-year period. Historically, the median IPO stock has lost roughly 41% of its value five years after its first day of trading. Ipos are somewhat notoriously risky investments.
    - DanielHB 4mo ago
      I remember seeing a video about this subject, since large IPOs are automatically included in index funds it is kinda of a way to extract value from passive investors. Insiders cash out before it hits the indexes, index crashes by a fraction for a %, all pensions in the country (and many overseas) pay for it. But with OpenAI and SpaceX IPOing roughly at the same time it will likely be more than fraction of a % in this/next year.
qeternity 4mo ago
> Venture capitalists & private investors are sucking all of the possible growth and future upside from these companies and then dumping them on retail investors when there's nothing left. A lot of the money that is deployed by VCs comes from pension funds and asset managers that ultimately manage money for the average Joe.
- andriy_koval 4mo ago
  Is there any evidence of what is the share/volume of such assets involved?
surgical_fire 4mo ago
If they could have gone public, they probably would have. I hope they do, their S1 might be good meme material. Companies that reached a level of maturity where going public make sense don't keep doing funding rounds to cover the rate at which they bleed money.
w10-1 4mo ago
Often only minimal shares are floated on the public market - 5-10% now is not unusual. Also, founders keep priority shares to keep the company. So IPO is not particularly a liquidity event for investors as much as a valuation/pricing event. Indeed, the tech IPO's that have done the worst were the ones where shareholders wanted liquidity. Clearly none of the multi-trillion dollar companies could find a buyer now if they really needed to sell themselves, so they're not really "worth" that much. (Nor are their founders, who can't sell their shares without tanking the stock.) So these stocks are more like derivatives: a way to bet on the future where betting volume is huge relative to the underlying asset.
dataviz1000 4mo ago
> dumping them on retail investors They are dumping them on your 401k -- especially SpaceX.
tailscaler2026 4mo ago
dumping ground because they spent the last 20 years convincing everyone with a 401k it belonged in index funds. index funds will be the cause of the next catastrophic collapse
- hibgymnb 4mo ago
  elaborate please
  - BoneShard 4mo ago
    easy: 1. Shit goes into S&P 500 (pump phase) 2. Shit goes to 0. Your 401(k) invested into S&P 500 takes a dive (dump phase) 3. Retail holding bags (full of shit) phase. Case study: Tesla, with a P/E ratio in the hundreds along with declining sales and TAM, is a part of the S&P 500 and, consequently, of many people's 401(k)s.
    - stocknoob 4mo ago
      Index funds are market cap weighted. As companies fail, as they always do (median lifespan of S&P companies is about 15 years), you have less of it.
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
        Buy high, sell low in other words?
        jasongi 4mo ago
        Well... in normal times they would be entering at the bottom of the index due to the company beginning to grow, the purchase of which is being funded by a firm exiting the index due to shrinking, so assuming you have bought and held units in the fund, most of the time an index fund is buying low and selling low. And then when you sell your units, hopefully in aggregate the index is worth more than it was when you entered...
      - 4mo ago
stingraycharles 4mo ago
I think index funds are a big reason for this change, as many of these stocks are now guaranteed to be bought by a huge chunk of the market, making it much easier for them to become bag holders. Lots of professional investors are passing on the SpaceX IPO for example, which is why they had to increase the share of the retail investors.
mcoliver 4mo ago
Bingo. The bigger story is that the float is not there so the companies are "public" in that they sell a small number of shares at IPO to get crazy market caps that then force the ETFs to buy stimulating demand. It's genius and infuriating at the same time.
- DanielHB 4mo ago
  It is a one-time technique for private investors to extract money from pensions. I moved all my money outside US index and global index funds because of SpaceX and OpenAI. At least until these IPOs have passed I will not move any money back. The sheer size of these IPOs might trigger a market crash.
  - eudamoniac 4mo ago
    Shouldn't you have waited to move your money after the IPO but before the holding period for insiders expires?
    - DanielHB 4mo ago
      I moved more than a year ago, the US stock market is basically just gambling by now.

onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago

> But that isn't what it is anymore, it's a dumping ground. We got "dumped" Google and Facebook, so... Those probably made up for all the other "dumps". We also got "dumped" TSLA, which is meme-ing in the trillions at the moment. You can short Anthropic at IPO if you want...

NewJazz 4mo ago
Google IPO 20 years ago, Tesla 15 years ago, facebook almost 15 years ago. Situations change.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago
  When did they change? 3 years and 4 months ago? 1 year ago? 8 years? Because when Facebook IPO'd everyone was saying the stock market was a dumping ground... Same with Google... Same with Pets.com and WebVan...
  - Npovview 4mo ago
    Few Pheonix(s) rise from the ashes of many Unicorns.
  - pixelatedindex 4mo ago
    Sometimes when things change in an insidious manner, it’s hard to point out _when_ the decline started.
- signatoremo 4mo ago
  Maybe but can you elaborate what the changes are?
- icedchai 4mo ago
  "This time it's different", right?
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
surgical_fire 4mo ago
Or he can just steer clear of the eventual Anthropic stock. Shorting is not the only strategy available to avoid losing money. But you, of course, can buy on their IPO. They need every bagholder they can get :)
halamadrid 4mo ago
Looking back it feels like GOOG, FB, TSLA etc. all went IPO at reasonable valuations. Retail & public investors did benefit long term and continuing to get higher valuations in public is not a small feat compared to a VC valuation. A trillion dollar valuation seemed so hard back in the day and now there are so many companies in that list. What's the next level? Is this just signs that $ is no longer the inflating at the same rate over time and its the realistic inflation that is reflecting in the stock market? Prices of all goods surely has to follow to make up for the revenue needed to sustain these valuations and also the salaries to sustain the prices. Unfortunately, those who are not in the loop is not going to have a good time.
- ml_basics 4mo ago
  maybe we will look back and also think that the current slate of IPOs were reasonable valuations?
  - lumost 4mo ago
    The critical view is that these IPOs are bumping up against physics. How many trillion dollar companies can the economy support? The US GDP is roughly 32 Trillion. A company with 100 billion dollars in revenue and 10x annual growth would be expected to increase the size of the economy by 3.2% in its first year, and about 30% in it's second year post IPO existing. While we could claim that such a company can grow by consuming a larger share of the GDP ... this would not bode well for future political stability, and nationalization would be a major topic. So your left with a fast take off scenario, a job apocalypse, or a massively reduced growth rate.
    - fittingopposite 4mo ago
      Wait for more inflation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R...
    - adammarples 4mo ago
      If Anthropic has anything line that level of success, it will also be at the expense of huge unemployment, because Claude is really competing with knowledge work

taude 4mo ago

Yeup, no shortage of tech IPOs over the past five years that are now valued at like 5% of what they were after being dumped onto the market: ZoomInfo, Bumble, Gemini And many more that are 50% of what they were: Snowflake, Coinbase And many more that went back to private companies and then were sold off: Carbon Black, etc... I'm actually too lazy to go list out all of them. But employees, beware, of those gnarly lockup periods post IPO where all the better classed options than yours get to exit.

pas 4mo ago
... still, "on average" IPOs tend to make money, no? that's why people (fight to be able) to buy them. this gives a nice comfy exit to many late-stage investors, etc. and, of course, it's hard to say that it's great that these companies are mere shadows of themselves post-IPO, but also it's impossible to non-misleadingly assess each IPO as if they were in a vacuum. obviously Coinbase is/was a stupid venture, but at the same time it was a pretty good bet at the time. and the same stands for a lot of these.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- executivevice 4mo ago
  > Approximately 56% to 60% of U.S. initial public offerings (IPOs) lose absolute value over a five-year period. Historically, the median IPO stock has lost roughly 41% of its value five years after its first day of trading. Ipos are somewhat notoriously risky investments.
  - DanielHB 4mo ago
    I remember seeing a video about this subject, since large IPOs are automatically included in index funds it is kinda of a way to extract value from passive investors. Insiders cash out before it hits the indexes, index crashes by a fraction for a %, all pensions in the country (and many overseas) pay for it. But with OpenAI and SpaceX IPOing roughly at the same time it will likely be more than fraction of a % in this/next year.

qeternity 4mo ago

> Venture capitalists & private investors are sucking all of the possible growth and future upside from these companies and then dumping them on retail investors when there's nothing left. A lot of the money that is deployed by VCs comes from pension funds and asset managers that ultimately manage money for the average Joe.

andriy_koval 4mo ago
Is there any evidence of what is the share/volume of such assets involved?

surgical_fire 4mo ago

If they could have gone public, they probably would have. I hope they do, their S1 might be good meme material. Companies that reached a level of maturity where going public make sense don't keep doing funding rounds to cover the rate at which they bleed money.

w10-1 4mo ago

Often only minimal shares are floated on the public market - 5-10% now is not unusual. Also, founders keep priority shares to keep the company. So IPO is not particularly a liquidity event for investors as much as a valuation/pricing event. Indeed, the tech IPO's that have done the worst were the ones where shareholders wanted liquidity. Clearly none of the multi-trillion dollar companies could find a buyer now if they really needed to sell themselves, so they're not really "worth" that much. (Nor are their founders, who can't sell their shares without tanking the stock.) So these stocks are more like derivatives: a way to bet on the future where betting volume is huge relative to the underlying asset.

dataviz1000 4mo ago

> dumping them on retail investors They are dumping them on your 401k -- especially SpaceX.

tailscaler2026 4mo ago

dumping ground because they spent the last 20 years convincing everyone with a 401k it belonged in index funds. index funds will be the cause of the next catastrophic collapse

hibgymnb 4mo ago
elaborate please
- BoneShard 4mo ago
  easy: 1. Shit goes into S&P 500 (pump phase) 2. Shit goes to 0. Your 401(k) invested into S&P 500 takes a dive (dump phase) 3. Retail holding bags (full of shit) phase. Case study: Tesla, with a P/E ratio in the hundreds along with declining sales and TAM, is a part of the S&P 500 and, consequently, of many people's 401(k)s.
  - stocknoob 4mo ago
    Index funds are market cap weighted. As companies fail, as they always do (median lifespan of S&P companies is about 15 years), you have less of it.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
      Buy high, sell low in other words?
      - jasongi 4mo ago
        Well... in normal times they would be entering at the bottom of the index due to the company beginning to grow, the purchase of which is being funded by a firm exiting the index due to shrinking, so assuming you have bought and held units in the fund, most of the time an index fund is buying low and selling low. And then when you sell your units, hopefully in aggregate the index is worth more than it was when you entered...
    - 4mo ago

stingraycharles 4mo ago

I think index funds are a big reason for this change, as many of these stocks are now guaranteed to be bought by a huge chunk of the market, making it much easier for them to become bag holders. Lots of professional investors are passing on the SpaceX IPO for example, which is why they had to increase the share of the retail investors.

mcoliver 4mo ago

Bingo. The bigger story is that the float is not there so the companies are "public" in that they sell a small number of shares at IPO to get crazy market caps that then force the ETFs to buy stimulating demand. It's genius and infuriating at the same time.

DanielHB 4mo ago
It is a one-time technique for private investors to extract money from pensions. I moved all my money outside US index and global index funds because of SpaceX and OpenAI. At least until these IPOs have passed I will not move any money back. The sheer size of these IPOs might trigger a market crash.
- eudamoniac 4mo ago
  Shouldn't you have waited to move your money after the IPO but before the holding period for insiders expires?
  - DanielHB 4mo ago
    I moved more than a year ago, the US stock market is basically just gambling by now.