VC

ThinkBigger01

It will certainly go down once locked up VC's will be allowed to start selling in tranches.

Curious_Olive_5266

It is very believable. That's just how VC works.

tradematesHQ

The real kicker isn't SpaceX itself, it's the precedent. Once Nasdaq showed they'll bend rules for a cash-burning unicorn, every VC with a dogshit balance sheet is lining up. OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe - they all see the same exit. "Just 1%" adds up fast when you've got a dozen of these things bleeding value into your QQQ. The 'insider tax' comment nailed it: you're paying PE firms via dilution, and your expense ratio is the least of your worries. Passive funds are turning into a dumpster for private equity trash.

Reaper_1492

This isn’t really true. It’s partially true - but also there’s a ton of VC capital tied up and they need an exit path, it’s not bad or good, it’s just the lifecycle of financing a pre-IPO company.

GunBrothersGaming

I was offered sharea pf SPCX at $165 a share toget in. Fuck my VC for trying to make a few bucks.

ExtruDR

I am all for having a polite discussion, which this is. I very much appreciate your demeanor and patience. \- this is r/stocks, so I know how out of the pocket I am with what I have below. If the debate is whether you can make money on the IPO or not, then I don't care how you gamble with your money. For me, personally, I still have to be skeptical and dismissive of this BS and an investment in Elon's companies is just the same as placing a bet in a dog- or cock-fight. I might make money, but I am contributing to a morally wrong activity. To be clear: I WANT a better future, I want space travel and exploration, I want to get resources from space and have better sources of energy, better computers and many other ways to improve humans (ALL HUMANS') quality of life. I also know that these are deep-futurist goals and that these will not happen within my (and your) lifetime. I believe that we have a responsibility to help advance things in the right direction and to improve things here while and where we can. Having made a statement about my personal values and beliefs, I want to continue by saying that I do not think that Elon or his companies share these values. These are land grabs. Elon IS a supremacist of some sort... he does believe that some people are more deserving that others. That some are worthy and some are NPCs or chattel or whatever. This is incompatible with my personal values, but also with what it means to be in a modern society. I am old enough to remember the hype when a company was going to release "something" that was going to revolutionize personal transportation for ever. Wired and every other magazine and web site were hyping this iPod-era unveiling like mad for WEEKS. A silicon valley company with great VC funding run by a genius founder and innovator. That was the Segway. That also feels like the Boring company or that electric company that put some batteries and motors into some Lotus cars for rich people.

FroggyMcTerrison

"VC: 'What's your moat?' Juan: 'The grass grows back.' VC: 'You son of a bitch, I'm in.'"

DONNIENARC0

Ran out of VC money? The same Anthropic that got $65b in a series H like a week ago?

Tim_Apple_938

That is true. But they don’t really matter Enterprise market penetration is largely measured via “what percent of F500 is locked in” VC startups funneling money back into the labs from their portfolio companies *already happens.* And that’s not enough revenue to make a difference empirically

bzl33

Claude Code revenue isn't durable, I think it's already passed the hype period. That said every single prominent VC thinks Anthropic is God so maybe the market stays irrational longer.

shtoops

OpenAI isn’t a random VC-backed startup. It’s arguably Microsoft’s most important strategic partner. “Anthropic buys OpenAI’s IP for pennies” scenario is pure regardium. Microsoft will be the one to pick up the pieces.

k3t4mine

I've called the top 5 times this year already, I have no idea. But for the first time since 2003, net equity supply is positive. [Good Bloomberg chart.](https://ibb.co/6cZHVSTX) It actually makes economic sense too. Companies think now is a good time to sell shares. Debt markets have been gobbling up issues from the hyperscalers so far, and SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic have had no issues getting VC funding. So why raise equity now? Because they think this is peak froth.

GreenerThanYou

Capital G has talent on par with top VC/IB’s

teahugger

That’s the VC strategy. Invest in dozens of losers but one big win can make up for it.

Rachel_Paigefe

$852B valuation before IPO is wild. If they hit public markets at that, it’ll be bigger than most FAANG companies on day 1. Big question for me: can the cash burn justify it? Data centers + training costs are insane right now. Microsoft’s 27% stake is looking like one of the best VC bets ever though. Curious if they’ll do a direct listing vs traditional IPO. As a private company they can move faster, which is probably why Altman said timing isn’t set yet.

usrnmz

Now add in VC and insider selling.

RoboticGreg

US companies are 100% using Deepseek. I'm guessing my company is switching over to it soon. Every VC funded company has basically required 100% ai code support and now that we are heading into the "extract" phase of "subsidize, addict, extract" almost all of the board of every VC and many PE backed companies are looking for ways to salvage their companies that are ALMOST ebitda positive so they can exit them. Granted that's not the powerhouse of the American stock market, but they out number the powerhouses 10:1. If 10% of those small companies make it with engrained Chinese AI support, it will be very very hard to dig it out. I really feel the next 5 years is going to be a ridiculous power struggle that will influence what happens in the world for many decades afterwards depending on who wins up controlling the major ai support models, because it's REALLY getting dug in in very invisible ways: managing order goes, coding support, research, copy editing, unsexy services everyone vaguely knows happen, but they don't pay attention to and are actually quite a big chunk of bottom lines. The OPEX reduction ai offers is too rich to be walked away from, and generally, AI is best served as large infrastructure where access is a service. It's a scary situation, imho

nohandsfootball

I think the reason the AI companies are already talking to the govt about being partially govt owned or whatever is because the govt is a more reliable bail out than the free market. I know everybody is, "OMFG no one has ever built ARR this fast" but VC subsidies are running low, so *cheap* AI is already disappearing which is going to bring revenues and valuations back to earth. Overvalued yes, a bubble, not sure about that.

beanawalla

I have not heard anyone defend the valuation of this IPO. Who the hell is supporting it and buying the stock at the IPO? I am former VC and this is bat shit crazy valuation.

Hairy-Preference-824

So Tax money and 401K money bailing out VC

redhouse_bikes

Around legalization time I got into a weed company early by giving a buddy a stack of cash, so he could give it to his buddy, who knew a VC that could get in pre IPO. Very sketchy but it worked out and 10x my money from that. 

tragedy_strikes

They've been getting hundreds of billions of VC money how are these technologies so great if they need this much welfare?

Guy_PCS

Spcx is a long term play for investors that want in on the VC fund. You want MoonShots this is the play.

foo-bar-nlogn-100

But US government is investing in AI labs at 1.2 to 1.4 T valuations not when they are small companies. So US gov is providing exit liquidity for VC using the public purse not helping make national champions.

livingunique

Nah, I have faith the banks will prop themselves up on Monday so more VC can escape the big bust It's not a huge bet

CHENWizard

Probably something different than whatever most people think it will be, especially the apes on WSB. If you’re concerned, hedge or hold cash. If you’re trying to predict it, you’d better be Michael fucking Burry or Bill Ackman. Right now, it’s so hard to predict because many of these AI companies are pre-revenue and not publicly listed. Hardware companies are making money hand over fist and seem very financially healthy. Their valuations may be slightly high, but right now, there’s no reason for them to dump. What could potentially cause a crash, in my personal opinion, would be high natural gas prices, but really only after AI companies go public. Maybe you see VC’s pull funding and that could be a signal, but I personally don’t think that will happen. If they’re paying much higher prices to run their models, then they will have to charge more for tokens or reduce the session limits on their paid plans. They will hope for subscriber companies to be so reliant on AI by then that they will pony up and pay whatever the AI companies request. Maybe some will, maybe some won’t. If the majority decide not to pay and instead cut AI budgets, then AI companies will start faltering and will be the first domino to fall which will propagate all the way back to the material suppliers. My prediction, if there is to be a crash, is this: AI companies go public, energy demands cannot be met, model costs become unsustainable. I’m not sure what the energy cost ($/kwh) would have to be to cause this though. There’s also a chance that there is no bubble and we are just witnessing a time where many of the largest companies in the world are not mature, but rather growth companies.

Zipski577

SpaceX investors are not buying stocks they are private equity and VC investors primarily

santambroeus

NBIM has fairly limited private company exposure. Nicolai tangen (CEO of the fund) has been pushing to get approval to invest in PE/VC however this would require approval by Norwegian Parliament, which so far has voted it down

kanzaki1234

This smells like the subprime mortgage. This guy is really regarded but can borrow from VC

rioferdy838

I mean, how the fuck are you allowing a loss making company into the s&p 500 or anywhere near these types of indexes.  Fuck that. I don’t want my pension to be some dipshit VC and Elons exit liquidity. 

Zernfix

SpaceX wouldn't hit VTI as hard as you think regardless of whether it's worth $1.75T. Both indexes are float-adjusted, not full market cap. SpaceX is overwhelmingly insider held (Musk plus early VC not to mention the dozen plus share classes), so only the publicly tradeable float gets weighted, not the headline number (CRSP p. 12). It also needs at least 12.5% float just to be added (CRSP p. 10-11). So a $1.75T company with a small float is a much smaller index weight than $1.75T implies. And nothing gets added at full size on day one anyway. CRSP has a seasoning rule (\~20 trading days before ranking) and an IPO lockup rule where locked shares stay out of the float until the lockup expires, using conservative registration statement estimates for the first 180 days (CRSP p. 10-13). The initial weight is built off that and not the full cap. Like I said, VTI tracks CRSP Total Market which has no cap on constituents and just adds names by float cap, spreading the impact across the whole market (CRSP p. 14). VOO and SPY track the S&P 500, a fixed 500 count, committee picked index with extra screens like positive GAAP earnings (S&P p. 8, 12) so a new entrant there actually displaces someone unlike VTI A partial float of even a $1.75T company lands as a single digit percent name at most, not the drastic shift you're picturing for VTI. [https://www.crsp.org/wp-content/uploads/guides/CRSP\_Market\_Indexes\_Methodology\_Guide.pdf](https://www.crsp.org/wp-content/uploads/guides/CRSP_Market_Indexes_Methodology_Guide.pdf) [https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology-sp-us-indices.pdf](https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology-sp-us-indices.pdf)

Limp-Negotiation5790

I love how it used to be that IPO investors were getting in on the ground floor for the ride up the price elevator, but now are just bag holders for the VC and banks to dump their shit.

cuteman

> Look at anyone's credentials who is hyping it up... They're all VC investors You could say the same thing about the inverse, reddit malcontents

Eazy_DuzIt

Look at anyone's credentials who is hyping it up... They're all VC investors (bought in long ago and waiting for an IPO). A couple have been on CNBC today and they are all talking about how they got in SUPER early and "it's about the long game". Read between the lines: Pump and dump, they want SpaceX to IPO fast before these other $trillion+ AI IPOs these next few weeks. SpaceX will do fine regardless of what their "fundraising" does. They have performance and contracts locked in. But they're also IPOing at 90+x earnings which is insane. That being said I'm up 1,500%+ on TSLA but NASA and other space fairing agencies aren't putting all their eggs in one basket, it's too risky for the programmes and they need to fund innovation. For both growth AND value investing, I'm investing in the aeronautics industry as a whole

SirThaddeusGumdrop

Wake me up when AI can build affordable housing or provide child care. In the meantime, it’s just a way for me to use PE/VC money to make photorealistic images of 12th century Venetian orgies.

allgoodhere_100

If I had 80k, no debt, and a LT investment horizon, I would probably keep the majority of the portfolio in broad mkt index funds and only allocate a smaller portion to risky investments I understand well. Personally, I am interested in the energy sector because growing electricity demand and infrastructure investment could create attractive LT opps. If I wanted additional LT upside, I might allocate a small part to private mkts through platforms such as AngelList, StartEngine, Republic, UseLegion, or Wefunder. These platforms can give retail investors access to private investment opps that were historically available mainly to VC funds and HNW investors. There are tons of platforms out there nowadays so it's worth doing your own research. I would make sure the portfolio is well diversified before taking on additional risk.

Xinlitik

The Uber of AI… ie get people hooked on VC subsidized rates then pull the plug when it’s time to IPO

Ill-Dig8519

The Morningstar gap isn't really the story for traders. The more interesting setup is the forced buying window. QQQ and other ETFs have to absorb the float on inclusion — that's a mechanical pump with a known timeline. The trade isn't "is SpaceX worth $1.8T?" The trade is "how far does it run on forced institutional buying before the VC unlock starts?" For long-term investors, avoid. For traders, the entry and exit windows are actually pretty well-defined. Those are two completely different conversations that keep getting mixed up in this thread.

TheMadFlyentist

Yes, none of the AI-exclusive companies are profitable, and a significant number of them are expected to fail. There is no clear path to profitability for them. Many economic experts consider the AI sector as a whole to be a bubble propped up by overly optimistic speculation. Not the argument you think it is... But it is certainly true that many companies are unprofitable for years prior to finally making a profit. It's especially true of startups that receive a lot of VC funding (gambling), with AI being a prime example. Space X has been a company for **24 years** and has never posted an overall profit. The only branch of the company that has managed to turn a net profit is Starlink (literally first profits last quarter), and that business model has very little long-term potential as fiber networks continue to expand and physical connectivity in disconnected areas is growing exponentially. So their primary customer base is shrinking, they already suffer from severe latency issues, and within 5-7 years their speeds will be bottom-barrel without significant investments in replacement satellites. So there is no clear path to long-term profitability as the window of relevance for satellite Internet is arguably already at its peak. It's genuinely hilarious that you would ascribe concerns about the profitability of Space X to "hivemind" when the *ridiculous* IPO valuation is entirely the product of masses of clueless investors blindly frothing at the mouth just because they're afraid to miss out on the next big meme stock. If you could even *spell* due diligence then you'd run the other way. Lastly, you should look up the term "straw man" because you appear to have no clue what it means.

Pleasant-Shallot-707

Opportunities for VC exit liquidity you mean

sm7196

AI money printer only has so much ink regard. Google saw SpaceX about to ask for giant bags of cash and said “lol no we’re taking ours first.” Not screwing Elon. Just grabbing the money before every VC is broke and crying.

Master_Enthusiasm410

The index inclusion pump is the most predictable part of this. QQQ and SPY have rules-based buying — they have no choice but to absorb the float at whatever price. That mechanical buying is the exit liquidity for early VC holders. Classic setup.

Adjective-Noun-nnnn

I've been thinking of it like the self driving car hype. Remember the self driving car hype, guys? Every truck and cab driver in the country was supposed to be unemployed by last year according to the hype artist con men. Did that come true? Are there Waymos operating in every city on Earth? Are they doing so with no human supervision? Huh gee I guess the edge cases were numerous, difficult, and unacceptable. Now look at ChatBots and LLMs. A lot of progress made quickly. Hype clowns telling us it will lead to mass unemployment in every profession. Take a deep breath. They're neat but they're not *revolutionary* and they take a lot of resources--electricity, water, infrastructure, stolen IP, reddit slop, and of course silicon--to run. Is it worth it? We won't know until companies are actually paying--paying full price for what it actually costs so the AI companies can profit and pay back their VC investors.

moorhound

Even worse; they're gonna utilize the new Nasdaq fast-track rules to make muti funds and retirement accounts be the bagholders, *then* crash it. They're realizing this CapEx isn't going to have a short term payoff, and the VC guys that they sold on this shit early want their payoff now. The common man is about to get fucked on a scale most of them can't comprehend, and that most of them never will.

CrunchyMage

The issue with AI company valuations is not that LLMs are not an unbelievably transformative technology. It's that they're an incredibly expensive technology to develop the next generation for, and there's basically no moat around any of these frontier AI companies. Revenue is growing now while token usage is extremely subsidized by VC money, but the VC money has run out, and only IPO is left. After that the party's over. So when people have to pay for the ACTUAL cost of using the models, is there going to be positive ROIC on data centers and frontier model training? I really don't think there will be. People will probably just rather use a 5-10% worse Chinese distilled open source model for 100x less cost.

ClearValue1994

“The VC lockup and forced liquidation point is legitimate and often underappreciated by retail investors. But the Morningstar valuation at $780bn being treated as gospel is worth interrogating — they’re almost certainly using a DCF on current revenues which completely ignores optionality value on Starlink, point to point travel and defence contracts. That doesn’t mean the IPO price is right, it almost certainly isn’t, but the gap between $780bn and $2tn isn’t purely irrational exuberance either. Lynch had a rule about avoiding IPOs almost entirely — the company chooses when to go public which is nearly always when conditions favour the seller not the buyer. The index inclusion pump you mention is real and documented, happened with Tesla. Probably the honest answer is nobody knows what SpaceX is worth because there’s nothing comparable to value it against, which is exactly why retail investors should be cautious.”

eetsumkaus

Google is a leader as is Quantinuum. The thing is, even with all these technological developments in the past few years, the field is still in such a state that no one group can take full benefit of their research as a product. So the ultimate benefactor of one company's development may be someone else. Most everyone in the field, including the VC-funded startups, is doing something closer to basic research than industrial R&D simply because most people just won't believe you if you keep too many details tucked away under IP walls. Microsoft's recent majorana claims come to mind. People immediately found their claim of a majorana qubit non-credible due to how many details they kept close to the vest.

corruptbytes

bro has been in A LOT of VC meetings about all these things - he constantly says everyone is all talk but no build i personally don't believe him, and constantly try to nudge him back, but i think he's mentally checked out after spending years in New Mexico

CelebrationNo1242

Why do poors always think wealthy people are unicorns or something I'm a swe at Google and I know so many SWEs/PM/VC/PE/IB worth 7, sometimes 8 figures that post on reddit

Autobahn97

100% this. Getting in early on an IPO today is not so great since it goes up on initial demand/hype but then tends to settle as the reality of the 1st quarter numbers are reported to wall street. Then later tends to drop a lot in value after insiders begin to dump their pre-IPO shares after a lock up period passes (often 90-180 days). The multiple rounds of VC for a prolonged pre-IPO time has already extracted a great amount of the value in the company then the IPO finds public investors to pay out the later/last rounds of VCs that got in on the last rounds of funding. Mag7 are going to be lower risk and more solid companies, better weather any storm as compared to a recently IPO'ed company. When index funds need to dumping MAG7 to buy into Space X, Anthropic, ChatGPT, and whoever is next presents a decent opportunity to buy into Mag 7 with the additional supply of Mag7 companies for anyone interested.

CramerWasRight

Crypto feels kind of cooked imo. Capital is being reallocated to things that actually serve a purpose now. The crypto craze was enabled by a time in which money was basically free. All it would take was some bozo with vague ideas about crypto to lock in millions in VC funding the environment was so loose. Priorities have shifted for the better.

Thevsamovies

They had an ATM a little while ago that was like 2.5% of outstanding shares - and then some early investors (VC, not CEO or anything) sold shares to offload ownership %. But no, nothing actually happened in terms of company messing anything up. They actually just won a big nasa contract leading into this.

Silentkindfromsauna

Not exactly, it’s belief in your vision of the future that matters. If the combined entity’s vision of reality comes to fruition you get rewarded. The stock price weighs on the likelihood of that future existing. We see this with the money losing VC companies bleeding into the stockmarket as they have ran through all the private money available. Tesla shareholders being gullible idiots is another obvious topic that this leads to, but fundamentally the price is not irrational, it just counts into account a very ambitious future.

xesttub

TLDR - Create a company, and make the public shares (the float) as small as possible. Behind the scenes - have your friends and subsidiaries buy up as much of the public shares as possible (this is somewhat illegal). And even better if you somehow manipulate a bunch of indexes to include a float multiplier (ex> NASDAQ ) Index funds aren't part of price discovery. They buy at whatever the stock trades at. As long as the value of the stock keeps increasing, and people keep buying index funds, then index funds will never sell shares. If you can get to a point where index funds own nearly 100% of the float. You basically create the mother of all short squeezes. The price climbs uncontrollably. A pretend example would be - Index funds are structurally forced to buy some amount, based on the float, market cap and market cap of the rest of the index. Let's say day 1 there are 100 total public shares available. And 30 are bought up by index funds. The other 70 are bought and sold by normal traders. So price discovery happens for those 70 shares. The price is set by the 70 people (for this example we can only buy 1 share) that think the company is the most valuable. The stock goes up and down. But it's already not the consensus price of the stock, it starts to get skewed. But what happens if - some middle east company that rhymes with Saudi Arabia buys 50 of them. Or some subsidiary of some other company? Ok - now there's 20. Price Discovery starts to break down, because now, the people who think SpaceX is worth the most starts to hold those 20. Ok - what happens when there's only 3 shares? What happens when there's 1 share, and insider 1 sells it to insider 2 for 100x the real value? Well the stock goes to the moon (pun intended). This isn't a threat to just NASDAQ - it is much bigger. Some hilarious background - I did a big senior "capstone" project in college about how to hijack index funds. I even tried to do a startup and pitch to some VC folks in the Bay. SpaceX is doing almost the exact same thing (but bypassing a bunch of the safeguards I didn't think could hypothetically be bypassed).

netcoder

Anthropic's models are not as good as they seem. They just added - as they should - a lot of tooling around them. Most of it happens behind the scenes. That's really their edge. OpenAI and Google are behind on that, but Google is slowly but surely catching up. In the end, however, the tooling (the biggest part of Anthropic's business) is basically just a SaaS. Anyone could develop the same tooling - or maybe even better - using the exact same models. The difference is that Anthropic is literally bathing in VC money, so it's easier and faster to get a bunch of devs to improve the tooling. And the better the tooling, the less you actually pay in compute.

Tricky_School_4613

AI is here to stay but the running cost isn't at all justified and currently we are subsidized by VC when the paying era starts the things come to reality

xxwww

I think the real value will have to be seen in the mundane improvements, the boring beaucracy and middlemen being removed and simplified across actually profitable companies that have real market purpose. Eventually we'll know if the token costs outweigh traditional process improvement. I think the perception around AI is exaggerated because software was a bubble to begin with. So many thousands of startups and companies failing to ever make a profit. VC charades of gambling on 100 companies hoping to get that one unicorn among 99 failures. There are probably many SWEs who have an entire resumes of failed companies and cut teams. When someone sees Claude let some non-technical nobody pump out an app for just a few dollars people keep hyper fixating on how much labor & time is saved, rather than "is this even a viable company/service to begin with?"

imustbegthequestion

I'll buy myself VC if there is a DeaL but Market CloSe.

Independent_Cow_6603

HODL diamond hands SPCE is gonna rise again and make all VC go broke

zoinkinator

IPOs occur when VC’s have squeezed all the juice out of a company and want to get their money back so they can invest elsewhere where the returns might be better.

Scared_Brilliant6410

Absolutely true. Private credit and VC markets have allowed these companies to become richly valued before they even go public. That’s why these mega IPOs are just an exist for insiders and a way to offload risk to public markets.

fungoodtrade

it could make sense if they did VC shit, but I'm afraid they will have to let more of their boomer investors die off first.

sultanmvp

China will prevail because they don’t have an utterly corrupt VC system fueling it. In the end, they’ll come in cheapest and the rest of the world will take advantage of this.

hexcraft-nikk

Well no, the problem is that data centers will need to update every 3 years to keep up with tech, and VC which was a major part of funding for AI, has already begun pulling back. The GPU demand will die down once these giant entities aren't willing to invest in something unprofitable. It's not about AI but rather the financial needs to keep up with the current spend. I wouldn't call Nvidias position a bubble though, they simply have an unparalleled demand for their product due to world circumstances, and those circumstances will end eventually. They know it and have already begun planning their next steps.

Electronic_Nebula_72

Quick summary in case this DD is too long for you: 📰 £ANIC Detail Megathread : r/pennystocks Sector signal — Reddit deep-dive on Agronomics fund highlighting portfolio company progress, upcoming regulatory milestones, and 2025-2026 fundraising momentum in cultivated meat and precision fermentation sectors. $ANIC.L 📈 BULLISH (ST ↑ · LT ↑) ✓ Thesis confirmed ↳ Portfolio companies captured 50% of global PF/CM funding in 2025 despite flat VC environment, validating concentration thesis. Analysed with StockSpy.ai — stockspy.ai 🔗 Try free: [https://stockspy.ai/?ref=PI0448](https://stockspy.ai/?ref=PI0448)

Stonerclub

When the AI bubble burst(it will burst), 99% startup who got VC money at super crazy valuation will be wiped like it never existed and the correction will be so massive, us market will bleed for days. People will always consume food, use electricity, visit doctor consume medication and drive vehicle no matter what tech is out there proving they are the real shite

RabbiSchlem

I’m not saying CEOs. I’m saying investors. Professional investors whose job it is to be incredibly deep into technology, many of whom were software engineers themselves, and incredibly deep into the Silicon Valley network. You don’t get to stay a VC very long if you only make bad decisions. Or if you go all in and are wrong. You also don’t invest billions in snake oil salesman. They read the company financials and do deep due diligence before these funding rounds. They can be wrong. They could be wrong. But at this point, everyone who has the opportunity to be a part of what they see coming next is going all in at the table. The 6000 CEOs saying AI is insignificant are judging the product today, which, what else are they gonna do? Anthropic made giant breakthroughs in productivity for SWE. So big and so staggering that everyone dropped what they’re doing to follow suit — because these enterprise contracts are blowing people’s minds. These models, harnesses, and productivity suites are built for SWE. The AI labs are not focusing on the jobs that the 6000 CEOs have an opinion about. Wait and watch what happens when they do. I’m not alone in thinking this, every single VC waiting to give OpenAI and Anthropic money to light on fire sees the same thing. Go look at the staggering number of layoffs in SWE companies lately. The productivity gains are real, they’re just beginning for SWE, and they haven’t even started for other jobs.

SilverBack65B

It's about growth. Anthropic Q1 revenue grew 80x. And it's about VC investors at this point not open market prices.

pagerussell

AI firms think they can generate user lock in like the social media companies did, or like Amazon, or Uber. This is basically the only play silicon valley has for like the last 30 years, btw. They haven't been able to though, because that requires network effects where the cost of switching is very high. You use Uber because all the drivers are there, and all the drivers are there because all the customers are there. Switching is hard for either end because it requires collective action. Uber et al spent loads of money earning that Network lock in. OpenAI wants it, but they don't seem to understand that no such effect is going to entrench. So they just keep burning VC money hoping they can get entrenched business processes or something. It doesn't seem to be working.

Agitated_Reason4504

Where’s the capex coming from after the VC money dries up?

bls2515

If they lop off the one, then $800B is more accurate. Only people to get rich on this will be the insiders and VC.

stumanchu3

At least their a credible VC choice.

andrew303710

Exactly, people invest based on upside, VCs even more so. The entire VC model is based on 100xing a handful of companies. One Facebook can cover a ton of failed companies and still have a ton of money left over. And obviously Anthropic has a lot of upside, they're growing fast as hell. People like to focus on the D2C business but their bread and butter is really the business side. Every company that adopts AI becomes a customer of Anthropic/OpenAI unless they're running their own models, which is pretty uncommon. I'm currently building a company that has a platform with AI powered features. And my long term financial forecast has me paying millions to AWS/azure in a few years, which flows to Anthropic/OpenAI since they are key distributors. It's an invention on par with the internet. Obviously we had the dot com bubble which burst but it didn't stop the internet from taking over, it just reshaped the market. Maybe we're in a bubble but AI companies are already showing much more of an ability to raise revenue than the early dot com companies were.

ReasonableBrother448

Have you read the financials, it is right there? Spacex left the VC runway without engines and now the biomass (retail) has to soften landing. Spacex launches mainly their own payloads nowdays and gets no money from those, only risks and costs. It is one huge never ending vertical Capex stack which has maybe 10% margins on top. Government contract is not the ticket to boast about good financial future.

Hacking_the_Gibson

Meta will be fine if AI shit pant. They will just keep doing exactly what they were doing before, printing money out the dick selling ads to companies trying to reach Boomers. Same with Google, Microsoft, and all the rest.  The way I see things, Nvidia is making chips that the cloud giants are buying hand over fist. The cloud giants are hosting mostly their own foundational models on that infrastructure and renting that shit to SMBs who are trying to basically build a bazillion wrappers around the foundational model and whose customer is another SMB. At the end of the day, the final customer is who is bringing the new money in. This ridiculous VC environment we are in is what is trying to drive the narrative of extraordinary customer adoption. Is that happening in a durable way? It sure doesn't seem like it. Companies are raising money at valuations in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars after being in operation for two months and pulling in like a few hundred grand in revenue. 

johndsmits

But all those you listed the power players made off with millions, why? every one except for the dotcom bubble: you were the exit liquidity. Every VC wants an ROI, and retail will fulfilled it. This is no different. It's all about if retail is going in FOMO will be a huge pump by the ETFs....or not, expect a huge flop.

trash-trader

I think we’re generally on an uptrend and 50-100% gain is feasible by end of summer. It could happen fast though but I wouldn’t bet the house on it. There is currently momentum holding against the recent lockup expiration that just occurred this month. With notable - but not extreme - short interest, a switch to long software again as a general trend, and their yearly Config conference happening end of June, I see strength all into summer generally as they showcase to the market these visions more clearly. I’ll reassess short term trends come end of August when the final VC/investor lockup period ends which will bring volatility short term. My longer term view is recapturing IPO highs and beyond into 2027 if they continue executing these visions.

fungoodtrade

I mean its still only a 1.5 trillion dollar scam spread out across a vast US economy. Its a scammy way of getting unsuspecting taxpayers to foot the bill for the US space race for sure. The VC firms will cash out at least partially, buddies will cash out, etc... the restriction on sale of shares has been limited or lifted following this IPO... very nonstandard bs

anon0937

Lol yeah. VC's dont see color and they barely see people. All they care about is if you'll make them money or not.

tragedy_strikes

Hard to know since they've been surviving on VC cash and compute credits and they've been training their customers to operate on unlimited* subscription plans for the last few years. *Lots of tweaks to pricing happening recently and there are similar restrictions with unlimited wireless plans eg slower speeds after the first xGB downloaded Not to mention that they're a private company and they aren't using GAAP. They have very favorabley timed leaks about their financials to make them look good eg using ARR inappropriately for their business model and releasing how they're operating at a profit recently to coincide with a 2 month discount Musk gave them for access to Colossus data center capacity. If you want an exhaustive look at all their financial shadiness go read Ed Zitron. I'm sure their S1 will be as eye opening as it was with SpaceX.

RaspberryExisting501

Anthropic will be minimum close to 2 trillion at IPO. Their growth is insane and they have a huge backlog of future revenue once they get more compute, ie renting Space X Collosus. VC's came to them with 30 billion raise at 900 billion valuation. In the scheme of things that price may be a bargain.

Antique_Hawk_7192

This time it's datacenters. All that debt going into them, when even a single one defaults, it's gonna make 08 look tame. 08 had something to bail out. Govt could deal with all those MBS/CDO, it could stop AIG from defaulting. What they gonna do this time? Shovel boatloads of cash into Nvidia for buying GPUs to rot in warehouses? AI bubble is Bank/VC/Private Credit/Private Equity funnelling money into OAI/Anthropic and their users, and datacenter builders(Coreweave, Oracle). There's nothing and no one to bail out in this mess.

ChoosenByPepe

Check Swarmer - CEO, software, VC backing. All clicks.

stankdankprank

A VC backed Ai company wants me to interview as a founding sales exec. I'm currently sitting in a porta potty at a shitty construction site. This is the top

Accurate_Ad5364

As someone who does MedTech Research with (PhD work involved using CNNs to upscale MRI Resolution), I hope you don't have a significant amount of money invested in this company. >*Am I wrong to think that classifying burns and wounds more correctly would end up saving the money?* You're assumption is correct IF the classifications were highly accurate. Hospitals save money by reducing Patient Turnaround Time (PTAT) and reducing malpractice claims. If the tool is inaccurate, then this would cost the hospitals more (malpractice claims). Furthermore, every time C-Suite Execs try and implement some new "time-saving technology" they only increase Doctor workloads which would provide an additional malpractice liability from patients who were just churned through the hospital. >*It looks like they've achieved 95% accuracy when assessing burn wounds:* This claim is extremely misleading. For one, they evaluated "pixels of the image captured" rather than the "# of wound sites." If you look at the Fig. 3 in the paper linked most of the False Positives (Incorrectly says the tissue can't heal) and False negatives (Incorrectly says the tissue can heal) occur at the border of the burn. **The border is the most important part because skin-cells migrate inward to close the wound.** By counting pixels their being extremely generous about their "Accuracy" since the border of a burn (The part that matters the most) \~<5% of the image pixels where the remaining 95% of pixels is dead-tissue a doctor could've predicted from visual inspection. **It's probably why Fig. 1, next their time to heal prediction, the image of the actual burn site is in black and white since any doctor could tell the same thing based on how pink the burn looks.** Even with their dubious pixel-counting metric, even more misleading is their communication of their provided evaluation metrics. Saying "Sensitivity, Specificity, and Accuracy" instead of the standard Machine Learning Evaluation Metrics Precision, Recall, Accuracy, allows them to avoid providing an F1 score. However, lets go ahead and calculate that for them ***S :*** Sensitivity = Precision = .807 ***R:*** Recall = Specificity = .955 **F1 Score = ( S x R) / (S + R) = 0.437** I'll let you search up the significance of a 0.437 F1 score, but its pretty clear why they didn't want to include it. Additionally remember that the lower end of the software's sensitivity was 51.8% which in that case, yields an F1 score of \~0.33. Either way, their VC money is not waging a war on retail investors, VCs trying to use the hype of "FDA **Clearance**" to exit their position. They recognize the underlying software is bullshit, and they're trying recoup some of their initial capital since 40cents on the dollar is better that $0 . Personally, I believe this was a bs endeavor from the start. Their Multi-Spectral Lasers are just different frequencies of visible light. Already Light is too finnicky for sensors in medical devices, ESPECIALLY when skin is involved (Search up HR sensors melanin to see why).

Turbulent-Concert549

I already made well over 10x on INFQ (bought at <$1 as an early employee). They were building something truly exciting back then, but lost the plot when they put a VC in charge and laid off a lot of top talent that ended up at competitors. They’re scrambling to rehire now that they’re well-capitalised, but burnt a lot of trust in the quantum industry.

fluffyleaf

It is for the next 12 months, if only because OpenAI and Anthropic have secured enough funds from VC and SWFs. Though the party will end eventually because continual losses with no path to profitability cannot be sustained indefinitely (unless there is some avenue they can pivot to, which nobody can really see), but for the next year their contracts and fab buildouts are assuredly funded by pension and taxpayer monies...

AccountOfMyAncestors

She really would have insider info. High priced escorts bang executives all the time, she can definitely get some industry gossip out of some tech and VC execs to front run. I've actually thought this could be operationalized as a black hat investment strategy

greytoc

Do you actually have any experience with investing in private small businesses? If not - it's usually not the kind of businesses that inexperienced investors should be dabbling in - unless it's just throw-away speculative gambles. You really need to understand how to read and understand the offering circular of whatever you plan to invest into. Just to clarify - LaunchVector is not really a scam. But their marketing and their business practice sounds a bit on the dubious side. They are basically just another small business broker who operate in a weird niche. They fall into a Reg CF/A+ world of investing where they are largely unregulated and investors do not have to necessarily be accredited. The odd part of their business model is that they seem to focus on very small ecommerce business. Small business brokers and low-tier investment banking who help raise capital for businesss are a legit business. But you really have to know and trust the business that you are investing into. Would you have access to the business operators? Do you get access to their books? What percentage of the business is owned by you? Or are you in a fund or pool of 100's of other investors with no access to the business? So - think of it this way - if a business is doing well or has a good business idea - the founders would raise capital either through personal loans, venture loans, or angel capital/private VC. Ask yourself - why would a business go through a small business broker to sell equity to an investor that can't help them grow their business other than for the capital? If you decide to invest - how is the fund or business valuation done? Are you sure you believe the valuation? Are the revenue and expenses audited? If not - can you trust the numbers? What's the exit strategy? Is it a equity or debt deal? These are just some of the basic questions that you have to understand.

NoEffective4393

It's access. Which AST does not own. By definition it's not a commodity. "The market treats all instances of a commodity as essentially identical, regardless of which company or individual produced them" Are F9/NG/VC identical? 1 is grounded while the other one trashed your satellite. 

kyndrid_

MSFT’s VC wing definitely holds inverse QQQ and SPY lmfao

SpyBagholder

X? Yeah they just bleed money and always have I think twitter was always hanging on by thin margins padded by VC

Super-Activity-4675

OP, you're right, this is a bubble, and I think you have a good idea what pops it. I'm pretty bearish on the market at a whole, but right now, it's still very much full port calls. Here's what stops it. 1) Someone says enough when it comes to CAPEX. My money is on Microsoft here, who ironically is in the best position to burn money of all the Mag 7. I'm not sure when that happens though. 2) OpenAI/Anthropic can no longer raise funds. Both companies have had multiple massive (many billions) capital raises over the last couple years. They're spending billions faster than earning it. At some point, lenders say no. As it is, they've sucked up all VC funds for the foreseeable future and are now heavily exposed in the private lending markets and are trying to tap the Saudi Wealth Fund. That is A LOT of money spent to still not be profitable. These IPOs will function as yet another cash raise and neither company is profitable, nor have they shown a path to profitability. If one or both of these suddenly can't pay their bills, it's game over. This will likely bankrupt a few companies pretty quick (Oracle, Nebius, Corweave in particular. Blue Owl and Softbank may fail too). 3) OpenAI/Anthropic start charging the true costs for tokens. They're already starting to do this by degrading services and changing the terms of their plans. Right now though, it's a subscription that loses money on every customer because they're subsidizing the costs and trying to get customers hooked. The problem is when customers see the real bill and businesses are forced to cut back on token maxing schemes and determine the real value of their subscriptions. 4) An inflationary storm. I wouldn't underestimate what might happen if the oil shock hits hard. Rates go up, and all that debt that everyone has gets more and more expensive. If I were to hazard a guess, 2027 or maybe 2028. It's coming sooner than people thing as the value for AI really isn't there. I could see it happening this fall depending on how this Iran thing shapes out, but right now, it's still irrational exuberance. Believe it or not, calls.

actias_selene

I don't think that it is a bubble, neither the situation is that good. Also afaik, eps only shows small part of capex, as it includes estimated depriciation instead.Still fcf remains strong for big tech. The issue is with AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. They are deep in  red in fcf. Their revenue from their customers account about half, the other half is VC money, with some circular funding being mentioned all the time. The AI revenue for big tech(MSFT, GOOG) is also a bit difficult to calculate as they are bundling it up with other stuff. Either way, even if there is any bubble, it can sustain years to come, unless everyone decides to stop all invesment at once. Even then, only some like MU would get crashed. Big AI would be probably bought out by Big Tech.

WesternPirate4448

I have used Hiive a bit to track secondary private market spreads, and the main thing to understand is that you are dealing with a true order book of bids and asks, unlike the curated SPVs you get on platforms like EquityZen or Forge. When you buy direct shares there, you are usually looking at a higher minimum lot size because you are interacting directly with an employee or early VC seller. The heavy lifting comes after you agree on a price, because the underlying company still holds a Right of First Refusal, meaning SpaceX or whoever you are buying can just step in and block or buy back the transaction, which can leave your capital hanging in limbo for weeks lol. Definitely look closely at the counterparty risk and whether you are buying common or preferred stock before pulling the trigger, tbh.

doktorhladnjak

I agree. If that’s what investors are willing to pay, that’s its valuation by definition. The idea that a few players can force through a high valuation doesn’t hold up. Look at any VC-backed tech company where the price flopped after IPO.

ThrowawayFiDiGuy

Housing market is attributed to inflation, low interest rates on mortgages post-COVID, a lack of supply in desired areas, and the entire market pricing in dual-income households. Blaming PE or VC is a very naive, misinformed take. Individuals that purchased their home at 3% 4 years ago are not willing to sell it for less now because interest rates are higher. This

jpdoctor

The bigger issue imho: VCs sit on the boards of public companies doing acquisitions of private companies. Not only is there a direct conflict-of-interest (VC profits) but other board members not directly involved with that VC might want to curry favor with him or her. BoD's should receive a helluva lot more scrutiny than they do.

MonochromaticButter

Small cap value stocks don’t have a risk premium anymore. Historically, high-quality small-caps used to list on the public markets before they became big, so retail investors had the opportunity to capture the small cap value premium and factor tilts before the company grew too big. Except today, quality small caps don’t go public, they get bought out by PE/VC funds and only go public when they’re huge.

_bones__

Which is the dot com bubble all over again. No profits, just VC expenditure.