Anthropic threatens the AI trade before the end of humanity

Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei has called for a slowdown in the pace of artificial intelligence development and famously put a 25% probability on AI going "really, really badly" for humanity. But before his technology reshapes the world, Anthropic is delivering an immediate shock to Wall Street: a dramatic revenue slowdown that threatens to deflate the trillion-dollar AI trade.

Ahead of a much-anticipated initial public offering, Anthropic informed prospective investors that its third-quarter revenue hit $16.8 billion. That's less than a 50% increase from the June quarter and a marked deceleration from triple-digit growth earlier this year, indicating that the momentum may be slowing. Its annualized revenue is projected to reach about $74 billion, slightly above the $65 billion figure at the end of July, according to SemiAnalysis estimates. The global chip rout deepened after the news broke. South Korea's Kospi tumbled by as much as 9.3%, while Japan's Nikkei 225 fell by as much as 5.4%.

Anthropic's drastic slowdown threatens to overshadow stellar reports expected this earnings season, directly altering the economics of Wall Street's historic AI funding cycle. Just days earlier, bankers were syndicating $60 billion of fresh AI chip financing for Anthropic and looking to fund another $50 billion for its chief rival, OpenAI. On the equity side, Anthropic is expected to begin marketing its IPO in early November, with markets pegging the valuation of up to $2 trillion.

Could Anthropic's latest revenue figure signal a broader industry-wide slowdown? A recent survey of almost 400 businesses, conducted in April and May, shows that the honeymoon period may already be over. With AI sticker shock having gone from rare to routine, one in four organizations delayed or cancelled their AI initiatives altogether. The trend indicates that enterprise demand is far more price-elastic than Wall Street assumed.

Further warning signs are showing up across the sector. Investors with heavy AI exposure faced a succession of unsettling disruptions, starting with China's CXMT Corp. The company announced a breakthrough in memory chip technology less than three months after its market debut, which threatens to disrupt the longstanding oligopoly held by Samsung Electronics Co., SK Hynix Inc., and Micron Technology Inc. At the same time, credit markets are tightening for junk-rated neocloud providers, which rent computing power to AI model developers. Banks are curtailing chip loan underwritings, neocloud IPOs from Sydney to Singapore are being pulled, and bond yields for sector pioneer CoreWeave Inc. have surged to 15%.

Still, these worries can be fleeting. CXMT may have a prototype; mass production is a different matter. Financial conditions for junk-rated companies might also ease once global bond yields stabilize.

By comparison, Anthropic's sharp deceleration -- a likely product of both cooling enterprise demand and an escalating price war with OpenAI -- presents a paradigm shift for Wall Street. The figures force investors to ask a pivotal question: Is $1 trillion in AI infrastructure spending justified, or is the market already overbuilt? With estimates placing the cost of bringing one gigawatt of compute power online at upwards of $30 billion, capital discipline hinges entirely on end-user demand.

Skeptics like Ray Dalio have long warned that the AI investment boom was nearing a breaking point. Anthropic's numbers provide a stark, quantifiable data point in the billionaire's favor.