←back to thread

Anthropic raises $13B Series F

(www.anthropic.com)
585 points meetpateltech | 3 comments | 02 Sep 25 16:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.021s | source
Show context
xpe ◴[02 Sep 25 17:30 UTC] No.45106287[source]▶
Remember the YouTube acquisition? Many probably don’t since it was 2006. $1.65B. To many, it seemed bonkers.

Narrow point: In general, one person’s impression of what is crazy does not fare well against market-generated information.

Broader point: If you think you know more than the market, all other things equal, you’re probably wrong.

Lesson: Only searching for reasons why you are right is a fishing expedition.

If the investment levels are irrational, to what degree are they? How and why? How will it play out specifically? Predicting these accurately is hard.

replies(5): >>45106974 #>>45107176 #>>45107369 #>>45109732 #>>45110507 #
1. pnt12 ◴[02 Sep 25 22:05 UTC] No.45109732[source]▶
I mean, this sounds like survivor bias in action?

Google also bought Motorola for 12 billion and Microsoft bought Nokia for 7 billion. Those weren't success cases.

Or more similarly, WeWork got 12B from investor and isn't doing well (hell, bankrupt, according to Wikipedia).

replies(2): >>45109921 #>>45111240 #
2. tick_tock_tick ◴[02 Sep 25 22:26 UTC] No.45109921[source]▶
> Google also bought Motorola for 12 billion and Microsoft bought Nokia for 7 billion. Those weren't success cases.

A lot of that was patent acquisition rather than trying to run those businesses so it's hard to say a success or not.

3. xpe ◴[03 Sep 25 01:23 UTC] No.45111240[source]▶
I see what you are getting at, but it is important to understand the context for my example and the argument I’m making.

I’ve explained various points at length in other comments: (i) why I selected this example (simply to show that folk wisdom or common sense is less reliable than market-driven valuations) (ii) how a funding round is influenced by markets even though it isn’t directly driven by a classic full market mechanism.

Something I haven’t said yet would be a question: how can an outsider rigorously assess the error in a funding round or acquisition? To phrase the question a different way: what price or valuation would an oracle assign based on known information?

One might call this ex-ante rationality. Framing it this way helps remove hindsight bias; for example, a subsequent failure doesn’t necessarily mean it was mispriced (sp?) at the time.