3 ms·

The timing of all of these IPOs has a smell similar to both the US Mortgage company trend shortly before interest rates spiked and all those companies started s

by to11mtm 4mo ago

The timing of all of these IPOs has a smell similar to both the US Mortgage company trend shortly before interest rates spiked and all those companies started shedding jobs progressively since, and/or the DotCom IPO boom. Where we land remains to be seen.

gekoxyz 4mo ago
While I agree on the smell I think that the situations are really different. I am not an economist but I think that other than the situation of the huge amount of money in play we are in a really different case. The general user (and I have noticed it especially with today's WWDC) basically doesn't get any benefit from AI (neither LLMs, image generation or photo editing). They were promised living like in Wall-e in 5 years and they are basically still living the same life. White collar jobs slightly benefited from the LLMs and same with programmers (while many say that they can get huge leverage the public results of what software companies produce didn't get the same benefit). Everyone knows the market will crash, nobody knows how much.
- charcircuit 4mo ago
  There is ton of utility. I use it all the time to study, to look up what's happening in the world, to understand the context behind what others are saying, cooking recipes, and much more. Considering LLMs have access to tools for searching the internet they have a superset of the capabilities of Google and consumers got a lot of value from Google. In fact from putting ads on the search results Google has made billions of dollars from such consumers getting value from their service.
  - Eufrat 4mo ago
    When you ask it to give you a digest of current events or as a study aid how are you ensuring that what your reading is a valid representation of the source material? Has it never given you false information?
    - charcircuit 4mo ago
      I can tell by my intuition. If I'm that interested in something I can dig deeper or just give up in pursing the truth.
    - thimabi 4mo ago
      Not OP but, anyway, AI output should be treated like any other source material. I study from reputable sources every day and never cease to be amazed by how many errors or misconceptions they have. Peer-reviewed articles, books from renowned scholars, news from major publications… regardless of the source, false information and contradictions accumulate. I’d wager that AI, besides helping me uncover these issues in the literature, has had a lower error rate than most of the materials that I read on a daily basis.
- base698 4mo ago
  My father in law owns a small manufacturing business and is not technical at all. His computer skills stop with some CAD and basic excel. He pays for ChatGPT as does his wife and her kids. The internet and dot com bubble didn't have millions and millions of non technical users paying cash for a product. Almost every coffee shop I go to has people talking about AI and ChatGPT even in areas with no tech populations. I still think it could crash, but it's got real users and a mind share like nothing I've ever seen.
  - Waterluvian 4mo ago
    I definitely believe in the broad existence of people like your father in law. What I’m not sure about is how many of them would keep paying if their subscriptions were priced profitably.
  - mmcwilliams 4mo ago
    This seems to ignore the fact that millions of non-technical people did pay cash for a product: AOL. And in fact the AOL buyout of Time Warner coincided almost exactly with burst of the dot com boom.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > the AOL buyout of Time Warner To be clear, there is a world of difference between IPOs and LBOs. In the risk they create. And in the risk they signal.
      - mmcwilliams 4mo ago
        That may be the case but the idea that non-technical people didn't pay cash for internet products before the dot com boom is fanciful. I would say AOL's acquisition of a legacy media company did signal the peak of a mania the way these IPOs are.
  - jrmg 4mo ago
    The internet and dot com bubble didn't have millions and millions of non technical users paying cash for a product The dot com bubble was basically based on regular people buying computers and internet service, and then using them to buy products they used to buy in stores.
- jghn 4mo ago
  > I think that the situations are really different Keep in mind that people said this before both of those crashes.That's the problem with bubbles. It's impossible to say if this time really IS different.
- hypendev 4mo ago
  I wouldn't argue the same. My parents love using ChatGPT, asking it all kinds of questions. My mom discovered Claude and helps her immensely with her job - where she would have to take it home and work a few hours to be able to finish the tasks on her computer, as her company that still uses Office 98, now Claude does it in 5 minutes. They fixed so many random issues using it, it is insane. My dad had a bike issue which would otherwise be solved by either trying to find obscure manuals from 20 years ago on random forums with me translating it from english to our language, or by taking it to a mechanic which could take months. This way, he just snapped a few photos, said what the problem is, and in a few minutes he had the fix. I've built software that uses LLM's for a specific usecase - besides general adoption, professionals in the field contacted me and thanked me for making their lives easier, as the tasks would often take a lot of manual work. These people are earning way more from using my software, than I am from their subscriptions, which is still about 20x more than my API costs are. While most non-dev people are behind the curve, the impact it has on their lives is becoming bigger and bigger by the day.
  - magarnicle 4mo ago
    Office 98
    - hypendev 4mo ago
      Sorry, my bad, might be 97 running on windows 98 - but yes, this is a giant corporation serving hundreds of corporate customers and a few hundred thousand private ones, using nearly 30 years old software because the management does not see reasons to upgrade and spend the extra cost associated with it. New machines and Windows XP are only used by upper management. Worst part? Their whole software stack is running on some version of Visual Basic, written by a dude that did not trust "others code" so he wrote everything from scratch, and retired about 5 years ago. Nobody knows how any of it works, or has any clue. The company will continue to run it and pay him for consultations as long as he is able to do it.
      - magarnicle 4mo ago
        Glad to hear that upper management are keeping up with the times, at least.
xyst 4mo ago
Got to payout the investors before the burst
jtolmar 4mo ago
There was a similar wave of IPOs with Uber and AirB&B, not tied to a bubble popping. (I mean, I think this looks incredibly like a bubble too, but for completeness sake, that's the counterexample I can think of.)
ai-x 4mo ago
The content of all these comments has a smell similar to 2023 when NVDA had a spectacular run and HN was absolutely sure that AI is a bubble. It's also similar to 2024 when HN was sure that AI is a bubble. Similar to 2025 when HN commentators were sure that AI is a bubble. 1000% gains later, HN will continue to identify patterns of 2000/2008 and are absolutely convinced it is a bubble Note: If a company gains 1000% and loses 50%, you can't claim you were right. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have already gained 1000% since 2023 (In Anthropic's case almost 10,000%)
- awwaiid 4mo ago
  Yes, many companies going out of business altogether, some of them large, is what a bubble pop would look like. As opposed to a uh.... Correction.
  - ai-x 4mo ago
    The ARR of OpenAI + Anthropic > $85B greater than McDonalds, Netflix, Starbucks, Google Cloud, CocaCola, and 1000 other iconic firms around the world. If I wanted blind pattern matching comments of dot-com bubble, I can just ask LLMs of 2023 like ChatGPT 3.5
- siren2026 4mo ago
  Depending on how much that bubble will pop, all of those above might still be very right. We could very well go back to the 2021 valuations.
  - ai-x 4mo ago
    If it doesn't, at what point will the 'bears' admit they were horribly and confidently wrong?
siren2026 4mo ago
Ben Felix got a great video on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOyFja87uyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOyFja87uyw The point he makes is that companies go public when they think they can get the maximum our of their shares on the retail market. Which make sense I guess. But the fact that the 3 of them are hitting the public market at the same time means they all came to the conclusion that now is the perfect time to unload those shares. Probably because they know there is a high chance of a big crash coming after. I will not touch those IPOs with a 10 feet long pole. But unfortunately a lot of people are about to get burned. My prediction is that this is what will be remembered as the last bit of exuberance before everything starts to unravel. Books will be written about how insiders will be profiting millions by unloading those shares to the greatest fools and middle class america.
- teaearlgraycold 4mo ago
  I’m also staying away. I need to not lose money more than I need to gain money.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > point he makes is that companies go public when they think they can get the maximum our of their shares on the retail market I think this is what's going on right now. But there are a variety of reasons that can drive IPO timing. Need for cash and owners needing liquidity being chief among them. I'd also say that post-Covid, retail has become a commanding section of the American equity markets in a way I don't think they've been in my lifetime. As a result, every IPO from now on will have to target retail.
  - siren2026 4mo ago
    Both OpenAI and Anthropic were able to raise astronomical amount of cash on the private markets just weeks ago. I don't think that's what's driving them. I really think what is driving this is the need for insiders, employees, early investors to be able to sell their stock at scale before the music stops. And You can only do that through a full IPO. All those companies had private secondary transaction but none of them were big enough to transfer the Trillions of $ required for the insiders to unload their bags.
HerbManic 4mo ago
One of the stranger theories I have seen is that it is based on Astrology as there is a confluence of Uranus squaring the lunar nodes... whatever that means. There is a saying supposedly attributed to JP Morgan (but not likely) "Millionaires don't use astrology but Billionaires do." One of the more rational ideas I have seen of any kind of divination is that it provides a means of passing judgement over to a near seemingly random system. If you are reading tea leaves, doing an 'I Ching' divination, biobliomancy etc. that essentially provides a coin flip to make you go 'yes' or 'no' to an opportunity.
- science4sail 4mo ago
  Indeed, there are several anthropological works speculating that the purpose of divination is to break analysis paralysis or unconscious biases. And if you are already sure of the correct solution, then you can just keep doing the divination over and over again until the gods give the answers that you want!

by to11mtm 4mo ago

gekoxyz 4mo ago

While I agree on the smell I think that the situations are really different. I am not an economist but I think that other than the situation of the huge amount of money in play we are in a really different case. The general user (and I have noticed it especially with today's WWDC) basically doesn't get any benefit from AI (neither LLMs, image generation or photo editing). They were promised living like in Wall-e in 5 years and they are basically still living the same life. White collar jobs slightly benefited from the LLMs and same with programmers (while many say that they can get huge leverage the public results of what software companies produce didn't get the same benefit). Everyone knows the market will crash, nobody knows how much.

charcircuit 4mo ago
There is ton of utility. I use it all the time to study, to look up what's happening in the world, to understand the context behind what others are saying, cooking recipes, and much more. Considering LLMs have access to tools for searching the internet they have a superset of the capabilities of Google and consumers got a lot of value from Google. In fact from putting ads on the search results Google has made billions of dollars from such consumers getting value from their service.
- Eufrat 4mo ago
  When you ask it to give you a digest of current events or as a study aid how are you ensuring that what your reading is a valid representation of the source material? Has it never given you false information?
  - charcircuit 4mo ago
    I can tell by my intuition. If I'm that interested in something I can dig deeper or just give up in pursing the truth.
  - thimabi 4mo ago
    Not OP but, anyway, AI output should be treated like any other source material. I study from reputable sources every day and never cease to be amazed by how many errors or misconceptions they have. Peer-reviewed articles, books from renowned scholars, news from major publications… regardless of the source, false information and contradictions accumulate. I’d wager that AI, besides helping me uncover these issues in the literature, has had a lower error rate than most of the materials that I read on a daily basis.
base698 4mo ago
My father in law owns a small manufacturing business and is not technical at all. His computer skills stop with some CAD and basic excel. He pays for ChatGPT as does his wife and her kids. The internet and dot com bubble didn't have millions and millions of non technical users paying cash for a product. Almost every coffee shop I go to has people talking about AI and ChatGPT even in areas with no tech populations. I still think it could crash, but it's got real users and a mind share like nothing I've ever seen.
- Waterluvian 4mo ago
  I definitely believe in the broad existence of people like your father in law. What I’m not sure about is how many of them would keep paying if their subscriptions were priced profitably.
- mmcwilliams 4mo ago
  This seems to ignore the fact that millions of non-technical people did pay cash for a product: AOL. And in fact the AOL buyout of Time Warner coincided almost exactly with burst of the dot com boom.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > the AOL buyout of Time Warner To be clear, there is a world of difference between IPOs and LBOs. In the risk they create. And in the risk they signal.
    - mmcwilliams 4mo ago
      That may be the case but the idea that non-technical people didn't pay cash for internet products before the dot com boom is fanciful. I would say AOL's acquisition of a legacy media company did signal the peak of a mania the way these IPOs are.
- jrmg 4mo ago
  The internet and dot com bubble didn't have millions and millions of non technical users paying cash for a product The dot com bubble was basically based on regular people buying computers and internet service, and then using them to buy products they used to buy in stores.
jghn 4mo ago
> I think that the situations are really different Keep in mind that people said this before both of those crashes.That's the problem with bubbles. It's impossible to say if this time really IS different.
hypendev 4mo ago
I wouldn't argue the same. My parents love using ChatGPT, asking it all kinds of questions. My mom discovered Claude and helps her immensely with her job - where she would have to take it home and work a few hours to be able to finish the tasks on her computer, as her company that still uses Office 98, now Claude does it in 5 minutes. They fixed so many random issues using it, it is insane. My dad had a bike issue which would otherwise be solved by either trying to find obscure manuals from 20 years ago on random forums with me translating it from english to our language, or by taking it to a mechanic which could take months. This way, he just snapped a few photos, said what the problem is, and in a few minutes he had the fix. I've built software that uses LLM's for a specific usecase - besides general adoption, professionals in the field contacted me and thanked me for making their lives easier, as the tasks would often take a lot of manual work. These people are earning way more from using my software, than I am from their subscriptions, which is still about 20x more than my API costs are. While most non-dev people are behind the curve, the impact it has on their lives is becoming bigger and bigger by the day.
- magarnicle 4mo ago
  Office 98
  - hypendev 4mo ago
    Sorry, my bad, might be 97 running on windows 98 - but yes, this is a giant corporation serving hundreds of corporate customers and a few hundred thousand private ones, using nearly 30 years old software because the management does not see reasons to upgrade and spend the extra cost associated with it. New machines and Windows XP are only used by upper management. Worst part? Their whole software stack is running on some version of Visual Basic, written by a dude that did not trust "others code" so he wrote everything from scratch, and retired about 5 years ago. Nobody knows how any of it works, or has any clue. The company will continue to run it and pay him for consultations as long as he is able to do it.
    - magarnicle 4mo ago
      Glad to hear that upper management are keeping up with the times, at least.

xyst 4mo ago

Got to payout the investors before the burst

jtolmar 4mo ago

There was a similar wave of IPOs with Uber and AirB&B, not tied to a bubble popping. (I mean, I think this looks incredibly like a bubble too, but for completeness sake, that's the counterexample I can think of.)

ai-x 4mo ago

The content of all these comments has a smell similar to 2023 when NVDA had a spectacular run and HN was absolutely sure that AI is a bubble. It's also similar to 2024 when HN was sure that AI is a bubble. Similar to 2025 when HN commentators were sure that AI is a bubble. 1000% gains later, HN will continue to identify patterns of 2000/2008 and are absolutely convinced it is a bubble Note: If a company gains 1000% and loses 50%, you can't claim you were right. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have already gained 1000% since 2023 (In Anthropic's case almost 10,000%)

awwaiid 4mo ago
Yes, many companies going out of business altogether, some of them large, is what a bubble pop would look like. As opposed to a uh.... Correction.
- ai-x 4mo ago
  The ARR of OpenAI + Anthropic > $85B greater than McDonalds, Netflix, Starbucks, Google Cloud, CocaCola, and 1000 other iconic firms around the world. If I wanted blind pattern matching comments of dot-com bubble, I can just ask LLMs of 2023 like ChatGPT 3.5
siren2026 4mo ago
Depending on how much that bubble will pop, all of those above might still be very right. We could very well go back to the 2021 valuations.
- ai-x 4mo ago
  If it doesn't, at what point will the 'bears' admit they were horribly and confidently wrong?

siren2026 4mo ago

Ben Felix got a great video on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOyFja87uyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOyFja87uyw The point he makes is that companies go public when they think they can get the maximum our of their shares on the retail market. Which make sense I guess. But the fact that the 3 of them are hitting the public market at the same time means they all came to the conclusion that now is the perfect time to unload those shares. Probably because they know there is a high chance of a big crash coming after. I will not touch those IPOs with a 10 feet long pole. But unfortunately a lot of people are about to get burned. My prediction is that this is what will be remembered as the last bit of exuberance before everything starts to unravel. Books will be written about how insiders will be profiting millions by unloading those shares to the greatest fools and middle class america.

teaearlgraycold 4mo ago
I’m also staying away. I need to not lose money more than I need to gain money.
JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> point he makes is that companies go public when they think they can get the maximum our of their shares on the retail market I think this is what's going on right now. But there are a variety of reasons that can drive IPO timing. Need for cash and owners needing liquidity being chief among them. I'd also say that post-Covid, retail has become a commanding section of the American equity markets in a way I don't think they've been in my lifetime. As a result, every IPO from now on will have to target retail.
- siren2026 4mo ago
  Both OpenAI and Anthropic were able to raise astronomical amount of cash on the private markets just weeks ago. I don't think that's what's driving them. I really think what is driving this is the need for insiders, employees, early investors to be able to sell their stock at scale before the music stops. And You can only do that through a full IPO. All those companies had private secondary transaction but none of them were big enough to transfer the Trillions of $ required for the insiders to unload their bags.

HerbManic 4mo ago

One of the stranger theories I have seen is that it is based on Astrology as there is a confluence of Uranus squaring the lunar nodes... whatever that means. There is a saying supposedly attributed to JP Morgan (but not likely) "Millionaires don't use astrology but Billionaires do." One of the more rational ideas I have seen of any kind of divination is that it provides a means of passing judgement over to a near seemingly random system. If you are reading tea leaves, doing an 'I Ching' divination, biobliomancy etc. that essentially provides a coin flip to make you go 'yes' or 'no' to an opportunity.

science4sail 4mo ago
Indeed, there are several anthropological works speculating that the purpose of divination is to break analysis paralysis or unconscious biases. And if you are already sure of the correct solution, then you can just keep doing the divination over and over again until the gods give the answers that you want!