Throughout the “AI bubble” talk in 2024 and 2025, I consistently argued that we were nowhere near the peak of the AI bubble. So far, that view has held up, as valuations are significantly higher today than they were in 2024 and 2025.
If you look at the way the dotcom bubble unfolded, dotcom didn't take off until after Netscape IPOed in 1995. The market had 5 more years of growth until the collapse. And even after collapse, the Nasdaq was 2x higher post pop than in 1995.
If history repeats itself, the stock market will take off after OpenAI and/or Anthropic IPOs. Be scared when random AI companies IPO with bad ideas and no revenue.
Companies IPO'd at an earlier stage of development in the days before Sarbanes-Oxley. Netscape was a 16-month-old startup when it IPO'd. It had about 250 employees. It had raised a total $27M in venture capital then, and then raised a few hundred million in the IPO itself, which gave it a total valuation of $2.9B. It had $16M in revenue and no earnings.
OpenAI is 10 years old. It has about 4500 employees. It's raised about $180B in capital, and has a valuation of roughly $900B on about $25B in revenue. Anthropic is 5 years old. It also has around 3000-5000 employees. It will have raised about $120-140B in capital, at a $900B valuation, on about $30-45B in revenue.
In the 80s and 90s companies IPO'd to actually raise growth capital - the public markets provided the money they needed to invest and expand, and then public investors reaped the benefits of their success, or paid the price of their failure. In the 2010s and 2020s companies grow with private capital, which has fewer strings attached, and then they unload the shares on the public market when they reach the top of their growth curve, leaving the public holding the bag.
I think we're a lot closer to the peak than when Netscape IPO'd relative to the dotcom bust for a few reasons:
* big banks are trying to get out of their data center loan commitments, even selling that debt at a discount. From the article:
> According to the Financial Times, major lenders are already scrambling to offload pieces of massive data center loans through private transactions, risk transfers and synthetic structures. The reason is simple. AI infrastructure borrowing is reaching sizes that are beginning to choke the arteries of the financial system itself.
* there are real questions about long-term liquidity and capital capacity across the entire VC ecosystem. Ed Zitron estimates that the available capital for all technology VC funds will be fully exhausted within roughly two years if current spending levels hold steady. More money has been spent on AI in the last decade than the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Space Program and the US highway system combined[1]
* short-term success of these new data centers coming online is heavily reliant on steady fuel prices since hooking up to the grid can take years and many burn diesel generators while waiting for grid access. If the war in Iran drags on, high fuel prices will continue to ratchet up the cost of data center operations.
* public sentiment around the economy was largely positive heading into the collapse, whereas we've been in fairly consistent state of economic uncertainty for years now. Affordability was not a topic of conversation back then and a majority of Americans are unhappy with the direction of the economy in 2026.
Eh, at the beginning of 1995 the Nasdaq PE ratio was about 17.5. The current Nasdaq PE bounces around 33. During the dotcom bubble that would be the early 1998 timeframe.
> If history repeats itself, the stock market will take off after OpenAI and/or Anthropic IPOs. Be scared when random AI companies IPO with bad ideas and no revenue.
"Be fearful when others are greedy" — Warren Buffett
If this isn't a greedy market, I don't know what is. Also what does it mean for the stock market to 'take off' when it's been doing ATHs for a while despite the geopolitical turmoil? Even /r/wallstreetbets has more sensible takes than this.
Agree, deeply interested in their books and then whatever report cadence we end up on next year.
I understand that a lot of people want to cash out, but I'm surprised they're ready to share, especially given I don't think they've had issues bringing in funding in the private markets, but maybe I'm wrong.
Well, I guess that's an effective way to deflect responsibility for the harms they cause from the people actually in control of their software and databases, onto 'shareholders'.
At this point IPOs are mainly for unloading bags onto retail. Every institution who wanted a piece of these labs got in years ago and captured all the value.
Both will probably drop like a rock after IPO and hang there for a year or two at the bottom similar to Figma if you are retail, there really is any point buying on IPO day just wait and buy all the shares you want at low price a year from now.
The funniest possible outcome is OpenAI going public and then having to explain to shareholders that the path to AGI requires losing more money than previously expected, but with greater confidence.
You can get exposure to OpenAI now via the Robinhood Venture Fund I (RVI) if you so chose (that fund is up 170% since its inception earlier this year.)
Did you invest in Tesla and now invest in Open AI because who cares about ethics if you can make money?
Anthropic has the obviously the better product and were seemingly ethically better until they burnt their developer goodwill and started accepting Musk infrastructure.
But does having a better product actually translate to making more money?
Should I just lay down and die because there's no good choice when it comes to investing in this product they market as killing off people's livelihoods?
Looks like there is only limited money in the market and there is a race to get it first. Wonder if the free market concept should move the prices down in such a scenario?
Kind of a radical idea. I did read about that in economy books way back when at uni... but I don't think it's really happening actual. At least my walled doesn't seem to get it.
PS: it's a joke, free market works when there is competition. VCs are making damn sure it's just enough monopolies that they get wealthier while consumers themselves get milked. Without antitrust actually being enforced, there is no free market.
Since it appears that LLMs can't achieve AGI and lose hallucinations, I presume a new company will appear with a new architecture that can - what happens to the current behemoths and their stock prices? Will they jump architectures?
That's not how money works. It's not an asset which is subject to conservation of matter like gold.
Banks make money by giving out loans is a meme, but it's actually true here. You kind of need collateral to do that, but a stock of a company which has revenue is a perfectly cromulent collateral even by strict standards. It's not even some infinite money glitch - it's kinda how the whole system is supposed to work.
The stock market is largely about betting on expectations of future value while money is just a token which is used to settle things. E.g. if you think about simplified mechanics of IPO, say, investor Alice buys OpenAI shares, OpenAI gets the money and Alice has shares. If for simplicity we assume that Alice and OpenAI use same bank and there are no intermediaries, then it literally just updates two cells in a database. And Alice now has shares which is an asset of known value, thus can be borrowed against, etc. Also, say, OpenAI can use that money to repay debt, then perhaps lender would buy SpaceX stocks - it's not like money was withdrawn from the system.
Of course, there can be some interference: multiple companies do IPO around same time it would reduce FOMO, and if they did it literally in one day there might be lack of liquidity.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 80.2 ms ] threadSo as we can clearly observe: "AGI" which at this point is (A Giant IPO) is almost here.
Now all of humanity will benefit from this being e̶x̶i̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶q̶u̶i̶d̶i̶t̶y̶ shared by everyone for everyone. Right?
If you look at the way the dotcom bubble unfolded, dotcom didn't take off until after Netscape IPOed in 1995. The market had 5 more years of growth until the collapse. And even after collapse, the Nasdaq was 2x higher post pop than in 1995.
If history repeats itself, the stock market will take off after OpenAI and/or Anthropic IPOs. Be scared when random AI companies IPO with bad ideas and no revenue.
My posts on AI bubble over the years:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40739829
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43385830
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47035647
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46241944
OpenAI is 10 years old. It has about 4500 employees. It's raised about $180B in capital, and has a valuation of roughly $900B on about $25B in revenue. Anthropic is 5 years old. It also has around 3000-5000 employees. It will have raised about $120-140B in capital, at a $900B valuation, on about $30-45B in revenue.
In the 80s and 90s companies IPO'd to actually raise growth capital - the public markets provided the money they needed to invest and expand, and then public investors reaped the benefits of their success, or paid the price of their failure. In the 2010s and 2020s companies grow with private capital, which has fewer strings attached, and then they unload the shares on the public market when they reach the top of their growth curve, leaving the public holding the bag.
* big banks are trying to get out of their data center loan commitments, even selling that debt at a discount. From the article:
> According to the Financial Times, major lenders are already scrambling to offload pieces of massive data center loans through private transactions, risk transfers and synthetic structures. The reason is simple. AI infrastructure borrowing is reaching sizes that are beginning to choke the arteries of the financial system itself.
* there are real questions about long-term liquidity and capital capacity across the entire VC ecosystem. Ed Zitron estimates that the available capital for all technology VC funds will be fully exhausted within roughly two years if current spending levels hold steady. More money has been spent on AI in the last decade than the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Space Program and the US highway system combined[1]
* short-term success of these new data centers coming online is heavily reliant on steady fuel prices since hooking up to the grid can take years and many burn diesel generators while waiting for grid access. If the war in Iran drags on, high fuel prices will continue to ratchet up the cost of data center operations.
* public sentiment around the economy was largely positive heading into the collapse, whereas we've been in fairly consistent state of economic uncertainty for years now. Affordability was not a topic of conversation back then and a majority of Americans are unhappy with the direction of the economy in 2026.
0: https://www.investing.com/analysis/the-ai-boom-is-starting-t...
1: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/19/visualising-ai-spen...
Shouldn't we at least be a little bit scared already when shoe companies pivot to AI and their stock goes up ~750%?
"Be fearful when others are greedy" — Warren Buffett
If this isn't a greedy market, I don't know what is. Also what does it mean for the stock market to 'take off' when it's been doing ATHs for a while despite the geopolitical turmoil? Even /r/wallstreetbets has more sensible takes than this.
I understand that a lot of people want to cash out, but I'm surprised they're ready to share, especially given I don't think they've had issues bringing in funding in the private markets, but maybe I'm wrong.
I'm going to guess $2.5 trillion which is about 2.5x their current valuation. I think the hype is going to be immense.
Microslop and Oracle are already way down from their highs. Only Nvidia as the shovel seller still performs well.
People generally hate AI. The IPO price will be inflated and the stock will drop 10% on the first day, like many late stage IPOs in the 2000 bubble.
Friends and family like the Kushners will cash out. Trump might even suspend wars around the IPO date.
Will they eat each others potential capital appetite? Or is there just that much laying around for them all to gobble up the bag?
Anthropic or OpenAI IPOing is literally signing their own death certificate.
The valuation will go to zero as soon as they have to submit actual numbers instead of the salad of bullshit they usually serve investors.
Did you invest in Tesla and now invest in Open AI because who cares about ethics if you can make money?
Anthropic has the obviously the better product and were seemingly ethically better until they burnt their developer goodwill and started accepting Musk infrastructure.
But does having a better product actually translate to making more money?
Should I just lay down and die because there's no good choice when it comes to investing in this product they market as killing off people's livelihoods?
Kind of a radical idea. I did read about that in economy books way back when at uni... but I don't think it's really happening actual. At least my walled doesn't seem to get it.
PS: it's a joke, free market works when there is competition. VCs are making damn sure it's just enough monopolies that they get wealthier while consumers themselves get milked. Without antitrust actually being enforced, there is no free market.
Splendidly interesting times.
Banks make money by giving out loans is a meme, but it's actually true here. You kind of need collateral to do that, but a stock of a company which has revenue is a perfectly cromulent collateral even by strict standards. It's not even some infinite money glitch - it's kinda how the whole system is supposed to work.
The stock market is largely about betting on expectations of future value while money is just a token which is used to settle things. E.g. if you think about simplified mechanics of IPO, say, investor Alice buys OpenAI shares, OpenAI gets the money and Alice has shares. If for simplicity we assume that Alice and OpenAI use same bank and there are no intermediaries, then it literally just updates two cells in a database. And Alice now has shares which is an asset of known value, thus can be borrowed against, etc. Also, say, OpenAI can use that money to repay debt, then perhaps lender would buy SpaceX stocks - it's not like money was withdrawn from the system.
Of course, there can be some interference: multiple companies do IPO around same time it would reduce FOMO, and if they did it literally in one day there might be lack of liquidity.
Edit: Or has so much somehow changed in two weeks that it’s no longer necessary to wait until next year?