Short-form transcript of a panel discussion (YouTube #shorts) about Wall Street, SaaS, and Anthropic’s reported $13 billion funding round. Speakers debate whether the headline number implies an overpay or is justified by Anthropic’s rapid revenue/ARR growth (mentions growth from ~$100M two years ago to ~$1B run rate, projecting to $5–9B by year end). The clip also includes broader commentary on SaaS resilience and corporate balance-sheet flexibility.
Chapters
Wall street is the madman in the backseat. In the end, the thing that bails out our incompetence is your growth rate. We've had a billion sitting on our balance sheet for ages. And that's a flex, people. We had a billion lying around for ages. What have you guys been doing this week? You know, it's the Mark Twain. Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. Well, it turns out reports of the death of SaaS and software were greatly exaggerated. Right. No one wants to say it, but if you get the direct listing, totally successful. The people buying don't make any money. Right. Ready to go, Guys.
I am so excited for this. This, as you know, is my favorite time of the week. And we get to bring in my buddy Cliff from Canva. This is going to be great fun. Now I just want to dive straight in this week. And Rory, as always, I'm diving in with a late addition, but because you love late editions. But we had to. Anthropic raises $13 billion. Started with 5, moved to 10, now 13 at 183post. Wow, it's a lot of money. It's a high price. Rory, going to you first because you prep for this one, Abs.
Well, funny enough how I did because it was a little bit anticipated and I think to some extent, yeah, it's. Look, it's a. I mean it's a high absolute number because 173 billion is a lot of money. But is it a high price? And it's interesting and we talked about this a little last time and relying on reported numbers, if the growth trajectory is really 100 million two years ago to a billion dollar run rate started this year to somewhere around five now maybe eight or nine by year end. Let's just take that as kind of roughly true. Let's say 1 in 9, which typically means the GAAP revenue is roughly the average of the opening and closing ARR. Which means GAAP revenue could be again subject to around four or five billion dollars this year. What are they going to do next year if they go from 1 to 9? These are the facts. Up until now, all I've talked about are facts. Things we know today.
