According to Bloomberg, demand is several times greater than the supply. A price of $70–78 per share implies a raise of about $90 billion and a valuation of $1.4–1.5 trillion, slightly below earlier expectations.
The main beneficiaries are already known. Google (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) together own roughly a quarter of the company, and Microsoft (MSFT) also has a stake. Amazon’s $18 billion investment could turn into $250 billion💪.
At the same time, Anthropic isn’t shy about moving into its shareholders’ territory. This week, it unveiled an office suite with an Excel equivalent, and Microsoft lost more than 5% of its value in two days. Amazon and Google’s cloud businesses are less affected, because they make money reselling Claude.
The valuation is based on Goldman Sachs’ forecast (the lead bank on the deal) of $600 billion in revenue in 2030. That’s 12 times more than this year. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian points out that just 1% of companies, mostly in tech, account for 80% of OpenAI and Anthropic’s revenue. And their spending is already slowing, as AI gets cheaper and budgets for it are being scrutinized more closely. Though cheaper AI doesn’t necessarily mean lower revenue…
So why is demand so high? Aswath Damodaran says it’s simply that everyone is afraid of being left behind. Investors are buying not because the price is justified, but because others are already buying. That’s how cycles accelerate—and how they later reverse.✍️
And that $90 billion has to come from somewhere. That’s one reason we’re seeing outflows from gold and bitcoin. Funds hoping to get in on the deal will also raise some of the money by selling other AI stocks. Around the IPO date, companies with a similar narrative could come under pressure.
It’s going to be a fun week🕯