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.

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taude 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	jLaForest a few seconds ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Maybe snowflake was a bad example considering that stock is up 36 percent today haha
	▲	pas 42 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		... 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.

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w10-1 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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onlyrealcuzzo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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...

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halamadrid 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		maybe we will look back and also think that the current slate of IPOs were reasonable valuations?

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NewJazz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Google IPO 20 years ago, Tesla 15 years ago, facebook almost 15 years ago.

Situations change.

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onlyrealcuzzo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Few Pheonix(s) rise from the ashes of many Unicorns.

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signatoremo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe but can you elaborate what the changes are?

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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surgical_fire 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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 :)

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qeternity 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Is there any evidence of what is the share/volume of such assets involved?

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surgical_fire 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.