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JumpCrisscross • today at 4:56 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

> google launched at i dunno a 1bn market cap and grew as the internet grew

Google closed its first trading day "worth more than $25 billion" [1] with $1.5bn revenues, up 234% from 2002's $440mm [2]. That's a 16x revenue multiple, 0.07 growth adjusted [3].

On a similar revenue multiple, Anthropic's $16.3bn half-year earnings are worth $543 billion. Adjust for Anthropic's 1,400% YoY growth and you're well over $3 trillion.

Obviously, it's a lot harder to grow at a thousand percent from a $16bn baseline versus a few billion. But purely on a multiple basis, Anthropic is in a similar ballpark as Google.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/technology/shares-of-goog...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504...

[3] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pegratio.asp


Replies

extraextra • today at 5:54 PM

If only it was that simple, to switch multiples around between random companies and come up with valuations

Google was profitable, free cash flow positive and had no debts basically

Anthropic is burning money by the millisecond, no profits, free cash flow negative and has lots of debts & commitments

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runako • today at 5:38 PM

As another check, SpaceX is trading at ~62x sales with a growth rate in the 30% range. Assigning the same sales multiple puts Anthropic at ~$2T market cap. Add in a factor for much faster growth (and non-GAAP profitability) and $3T is a really easy place to end up.

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