All-In Podcast Debates AI Investing: CoreWeave Debt and Anthropic IPO Under Scrutiny
On October 17, the tech podcast All-In hosted Ben Horowitz of a16z, angel investor Jason Calacanis, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, and former White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks for a discussion on AI stock volatility, CoreWeave's debt concerns, and Anthropic's IPO valuation.
The four panelists agreed that the recent turbulence is a normal market adjustment amid rapid growth, not the start of a bubble burst. AI compute remains in structural shortage. Ben Horowitz said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told him GPU and infrastructure supply constraints could persist beyond the end of 2028. However, Palihapitiya warned that AI infrastructure relies heavily on floating-rate financing; if the 10-year Treasury yield rises to 6%, business models dependent on interest rate spreads would face pressure.
On CoreWeave, Palihapitiya noted the company has about $35 billion in debt and needs to refinance another $35 billion to support signed contracts. Credit default swaps implied a default risk of roughly 953 basis points this week, suggesting about a 55% probability of default over five years. David Sacks said risks remain manageable as long as payback periods stay around 2.5 years.
On Anthropic, leaked investor-day figures showed Q3 revenue of $16.8 billion, net revenue retention of 900%, adjusted gross margin of 85%, and positive free cash flow. The company plans to go public around Thanksgiving 2026 at a target valuation of about $2 trillion. Palihapitiya suggested Anthropic cut its IPO valuation to $1 trillion and raise $200-250 billion to secure compute capacity and weather future cycles.
On long-term moats, Palihapitiya argued that electricity will become critical, citing a projected 1.4 terawatt-hour power shortfall in the U.S. by 2050, making land, power, and data center shells highly valuable.
