Five thoughts on the Anthropic IPO

Five more thoughts about the Anthropic S-1, after a day of digging in:1. Cash crunch fallacy? Conventional wisdom has been that Anthropic is going public, in part, because it needs the money. Kind of like why OpenAI is seeking around $30 billion after pushing its own IPO into 2027. Anthropic, however, had around $132 billion of cash and short-term investments as of June 30, which is more than 95% of what it's raised from private backers.Part of this is likely tied to timing, as Anthropic raised $65 billion of its venture haul just one month before the end of Q2. But it also hints at frugality or financing spend with convertible notes — or both.Also worth noting that the company has some long-term compute contracts that extend beyond its customer contracts.2. Absentee VCs. Anthropic's logo is ubiquitous on VC firm websites, but the same cannot be said of VC presence in the S-1.The only firm identified is Spark Capital, which invested around $777 million since helping to lead Anthropic's Series C round in 2023 at a $4.1 billion pre-money valuation.Spark isn't there because it topped the 5% reporting threshold — it didn't — but rather because of related-party rules. One of its partne…

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