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Today’s Menu

• Anthropic and OpenAI Race Toward Historic IPOs

• Larry Fink: Sovereign Wealth Funds Were Buyers During Bitcoin Plunge

Markets

TODAY IN AI

Anthropic and OpenAI Race Toward Historic IPOs

Anthropic is reportedly laying the groundwork to go public as early as 2026, according to the FT - hiring the law firm behind Google's and LinkedIn's IPOs as investors push the Claude maker to beat OpenAI to market.

Anthropic reportedly tapped Wilson Sonsini, a firm known for taking tech giants like Google and LinkedIn public, to start early-stage listing work. CFO Krishna Rao joined after helping Airbnb go public in 2020, with Anthropic also allegedly working on an "internal checklist of changes" needed to IPO.

Anthropic is chasing private capital at a valuation north of $300B, with Microsoft and Nvidia reportedly in for up to $15B combined. OpenAI is also in early process of preparing to go public at a potential valuation as high as $1T that would make it one of the biggest IPOs in history.

Both Anthropic and OpenAI are now circling IPOs that could rank among the largest in tech history - and investors want their horse to cross the finish line first. With talk of an "AI bubble" swirling and revenue growth under scrutiny, the first to list will test whether public markets believe the sky-high valuations are a floor or a ceiling.

When two AI giants race to IPO with combined valuations approaching $1.3 trillion, that's not just company news - that's a referendum on whether public markets buy the AI revolution thesis.

TODAY IN CRYPTO

Larry Fink: Sovereign Wealth Funds Were Buyers During Bitcoin Plunge

What's with all the large institutions suddenly talking about Bitcoin this week? BlackRock CEO Larry Fink used to call Bitcoin "an index for money laundering and thieves." Now he's on stage saying sovereign wealth funds are buying every major dip.

At the New York Times DealBook Summit, Fink stated: "We're seeing more and more legitimate, long-holding investors investing in it... I can tell you there are a number of sovereign funds... they are adding incrementally at $120,000, $100,000; I know they bought more in the $80s."

He took it further: "Bitcoin is an asset of fear. You own Bitcoin because you are frightened of your physical security. You own it because you are frightened of your financial security."

In his words, most of BlackRock's $13.5 trillion business is about "hope" in traditional assets like stocks and bonds. Bitcoin sits in a different bucket - for people worried about inflation, debt, currency debasement, and governments losing control of money.

Fink said multiple sovereign wealth funds have been building positions all the way down, and this isn't a quick trade: "They are establishing a longer position and then you own it over years. It is not a trade, you own it for a purpose."

That purpose is the debasement trade. Governments can print more currency. They cannot print more Bitcoin. Fink now calls that the "long term fundamental reason" you own BTC - a hedge against sovereign debt, inflation, and bad policy. The exact opposite of his 2017 position.

BlackRock's own Bitcoin ETF tells the story: IBIT has grown into the largest US listed Bitcoin ETF, holds over $70 billion in BTC, and is now BlackRock's most profitable ETF.

But Fink isn't blind to risks. Bitcoin is "still heavily influenced by leveraged players," which is why drawdowns are brutal. On one side you have retail traders getting washed out. On the other, sovereign wealth funds and trillion-dollar asset managers quietly loading up long-term.

That's the real shift this week.

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Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Damon James