Why Neil Woodford Won’t Buy the Anthropic IPO

The Anthropic IPO is weeks away, and its filing shows a business like no other: $17bn of sales in three months, still a loss, and $895bn signed away on computing power. Neil Woodford goes through the numbers and asks who actually keeps the profit from AI.

Answering customers' questions is cheap for Anthropic. It keeps about 85 cents of every dollar after paying for the chips and power. So why isn't it making money? Neil and Jon Adair follow the cash: to the next model, to the cloud companies renting out the chips, and to customers through price cuts that cost Anthropic about $600m in a single quarter.

Is this the dotcom bubble again? Neil takes on the comparison, and this week's argument between the analysts who say big tech's cash is running out and the investors who say the AI spending has barely started. We also look at why Revolut moved the coding work of about 2,000 engineers onto an open-weight model, and whether the best AI models can hold their price.

Then the question everyone is asking about the AI stocks coming to market: would Neil invest in Anthropic? He answers it, explains how he would judge any AI listing, and says where he thinks the profit from AI will land, including why the UK may be better placed than most.

Neil's views are his own and are not a recommendation to buy or sell any investment.