misk comments on Anthropic reports $104bn net loss in 2026

[–] misk@piefed.social [S] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

You can’t eat cake and have it too.

If Anthropic doesn’t own all stock they owe others they’ll have to buy it in the market. If it’s overvalued they’ll have to buy it at a price that will result in losses. If it’s not going to be overvalued then that means that anyone who buys into Anthropic on or after IPO is losing money. Not a good value proposition for buying Anthropic stock, no? And then there’s that $900bn of non-cancellable commitments.

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[–] chisel@piefed.social 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 child)

They don't have to buy their own stock on the market. They can just not sell it in the first place.

If the stock drops in price, the value of the stock they owe will also drop in price. So, in that scenario they will not have $900B of commitments. But it's the same amount of stock.

If I own 10 apples and owe you 5, it doesn't matter if tomorrow apples cost $50 Trillion then 50 cents the next. I still owe you 5 apples either way, and I have plenty of apples to cover that debt to you regardless of how much the grocery store is selling them for.

Side note: plenty of IPOs are terrible investments a lose everyone money. They are risky investments.

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[–] misk@piefed.social [S] 0 points 5 days ago

If a convertible note is redeemed in stock, where does the stock come from? Air?

What does the stock price have to do with their $900b commitments to buy products and services from other companies? My creditors don’t care how well I’m doing if I signed contracts. Revenue growth is slowing so how are they going to cover it while bringing loss after loss and their best idea for business is to lose money even faster?

The price of the apple matters because Anthropic is making claims how much they’re worth, based on how well they’re business is doing. If apples are overvalued then everyone is overstating that. And that means the business isn’t doing all that well. Hence, can’t have cake and it eat too.

There’s a reason derivative instrument valuation goes into PnL. It’s not even like counting nominal value of an option contract without physical delivery that some use to exaggerate value of such contracts, these are vanilla convertibles which can explode in their face in multiple ways.

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