alt Hacker NewsThere are a lot of parallels to the WeWork S1. They’ve made absolutely massive forward cash commitments, on a business that’s increasingly commoditized, and with little hard evidence that they’ll generate the revenue (let alone the cashflow) to pay for all these future liabilities. All while everyone is discovering there isn’t really a secret sauce moat to demand much of a a premium over cheaper options that trade a few points above the direct COGS (cost of compute in this case).
If everything goes just perfect they might eek by. If it doesn’t this goes from high flying startup to insolvency and bankruptcy real fast.
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that's a real stretch. WeWork was in a business that had already been commoditized (e.g. Regus) for decades.
Anthropic is in a business that didn't exist 3 years ago.
when they start removing biscuits from the Anthropic offices, that’ll confirm their WeWork-like death spiral
> There are a lot of parallels to the WeWork S1
Time has tempered it, then–re-read it [1]. It's a kaleidoscope of stupidity with no coherent economic case. The Anthropic S-1 is ridiculously ambitious. But it puts forward an argument for its valuation that is at least falsifiable.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519...
This is an excellent way of looking at it: buying something for the long term (computing capacity) and selling it in short-term, smaller pieces (tokens). The risk is that the obligation is long term while the income is short term.
It's like signing a 10-year lease on an apartment in NYC and renting it out by the day on Airbnb. It may or may not work.
On top of that, there's the question of how you treat the remodeling of that apartment (model training). If it benefits you for years to come, it's an investment that you depreciate. If your guests frequently trash the apartment, or tastes change (the model becomes obsolete quickly), that remodeling (training) is just a cost.
Yes, and 5 years and 1 Chapter 11 bankruptcy later, WeWork is now (EBITDA) profitable.
And they've gone private now.
My last shred of skepticism has been killed watching people try to imply this doesn't prove Anthropic (and likely OpenAI) were actually much better off than most people assumed and will certainly stay multi-trillion dollar companies
> little hard evidence that they’ll generate the revenue (let alone the cashflow) to pay for all these future liabilities
According to the S1:
- FY24 revenue $386 million -> FY25 revenue $4.59 billion (+1,008%)
- Q126 revenue $4.7 billion -> Q26 revenue $11.5 billion (+145%)
That seems like pretty good evidence of current and ongoing explosive growth. Much of this revenue is pre-paid (re: cashflow). Meanwhile, operating margins went from -184% to -$4%.
Seems like pretty good evidence. Will growth continue apace? Unknown. But the arguments for Jevon's paradox applying to intelligence seem pretty convincing, so the TAM here seems likely to be enormous.
> All while everyone is discovering there isn’t really a secret sauce moat to demand
Also not convinced by this. The Chinese models seem to have distilled their way to current levels, with Anthropic and OpenAI now getting serious about defending against this.
I don't think you're definitely wrong in all this. Rather, I think your claims are too confident.
I think this is unfairly underplaying WeWorks contribution to financial innovation with their creation of “community adjusted EBITDA”
except, I didn't need WeWork to get work done, I use claude like crack to get work done.
"token factory" is indeed a terrible business model - no one is arguing that.
IMO the whole thing is based on the fact of "we will reach AGI/ASI eventually, and when we do, we will reach escape velocity".
No one knows - you, me, or Dario if this will happen and when.
> increasingly commoditized
Is it increasingly though? As of 5.5 I stopped using other models all together (and I used to regularly swap, indifferently). My $20 sub no longer runs out, even though I do _much_ more than ever. I use it for every single task at work, even trivial ones, and my spend has gone down. I was given _free_ Codex and realized... it still wasn't worth it. My rational brain says Anthropic has no moat and this is temporary. The progress of all the other models is amazing. I certainly wouldn't bet on them.
But if I look at the actions of myself and the most competent coders around me, they are all doing this same thing - using 5.5 and not really looking around any longer. And we know its not even their best model. OpenAI may respond, Chinese labs may catch up. But for the moment, Anthropic seem to have added separation, not lost it, based on current vs prior _behavior_ of coders I know at home and work.