Right? This is going to be an interesting story to follow.
On the one hand, they don’t want to IPO right now, probably because they don’t think investors are keen to buy at the price they’re asking.
On the other hand, I don’t really see things getting better for them as long as cheap open-weight models that are almost as good as Anthropic’s exist. As more people figure this out, I think it’s going to get worse not better. So I don’t think they can afford to wait long.
I think LLMs are going to cause massive change, not all of it good.
Ultimately, I’m an optimist. I think in the long run, LLMs are going to enable us to do amazing things that we wouldn’t have been able to do without them. In the short term… I dunno. It’s going to be a rough transition.
I do think the people who think LLMs are going to keep getting better, leading to either some sort of techno-utopia, or kill us all off maybe don’t really understand how they work and what the implications are.
I also think the people who are categorically against AI are making a mistake out of fear, but that’s pretty understandable.
I think most the serious investors know. But, in a bubble, stock value can keep going up long past the point that makes sense. If you think that’s going to happen, it can make sense to invest even if you think it’s a losing play in the long run.
This should really make the timing more urgent for Anthropic. I was legitimately surprised when they decided to delay the IPO.
Also there’s still a real chance that Anthropic has some real value proposition that I’m not understanding, though I’ve yet to find someone who can make a coherent argument for what that looks like.