The AI industry's week from hell
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
A week of political upheaval, financial turmoil and salacious scandal delivered one final indignity to the AI industry Tuesday, as Anthropic's staggering IPO target fell short of expectations.
Why it matters: The bubble is wobbling. Investors, businesses and governments need a spectacular success from Anthropic to stave off a crisis of confidence that could tear through the broader economy.
- Facing new political headwinds, the industry can scarcely afford another setback — much less the spectacle of AI's crown jewel losing its luster on Wall Street.
Zoom in: Anthropic announced plans Tuesday to raise as much as $64.4 billion in one of the largest IPOs in history, targeting a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion.
- That's roughly $600 billion below what investors envisioned just months ago, as slowing revenue growth, soaring infrastructure costs and a punishing market selloff tempered expectations.
- Anthropic's annualized revenue reached $81 billion in October, but its long-term commitments to chips, data centers and computing infrastructure have also climbed to nearly $901 billion.
Zoom out: Anthropic's valuation reset caps a punishing stretch of new challenges that began with last week's stunning midterm results:
🌊 A blue wave of AI-skeptical Democrats will arrive in Congress armed with subpoena power and an appetite for investigating the industry's safety failures and vast political influence.
- Voters delivered another blow at the local level, favoring restrictions on data-center development in 40 of 41 ballot measures nationwide.
🤖 Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the central cog in AI's global gears, was swept up in an espionage scandal after admitting to an affair with a suspected Chinese spy. His board, the FBI and Congress are investigating.
- Nvidia has shed more than $1 trillion in market value since the first New York Times revelations on Oct. 29, with shares plunging further Tuesday as the company faces a new shareholder lawsuit.
📉 Wall Street went into a tailspin as investors reckoned with the implications of the Democratic sweep — including in data-center havens like Texas — for AI's sprawling infrastructure ambitions.
- The Nasdaq lost $2.5 trillion in market value Thursday, its worst session since April 2025, before staging a sharp rebound.
⚠️ Financial warning signs are mounting: OpenAI scaled back its fundraising ambitions, while SoftBank reported a $3.7 billion write-down on U.S. data-center equipment, contributing to a $7 billion quarterly loss.
- Amid renewed fears of rate hikes, anxiety is also spreading to credit markets, where lenders have grown wary of financing the industry's astronomical infrastructure spending.
Reality check: Anthropic is still poised for one of the largest IPOs ever, with Google, Nvidia and other technology giants committing another $26 billion in private investment alongside the public offering.
- The company could emerge with roughly $85 billion in net new capital — a historic financial windfall for a company founded less than six years ago.
Yes, but: Bubbles don't run on "good enough." They demand more, better and faster — indefinitely.
- Even a $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion valuation of Anthropic may not be enough to reassure investors, who thought just a few weeks ago it'd be worth as much as $2 trillion.
What to watch: Whether Anthropic can deliver a spectacular debut and sustain it after trading begins. SpaceX's stock surged after its record June IPO, only to surrender those gains and fall below its offering price within weeks.
