Thread

1. hn_submit · 1790165836 · focus · HN ↗

   I think the pumped-up hype nicely coincides with some A.I. companies' desire to go public in the coming weeks or months.

   I see lots of fabricated news on the internet concerning LLMs. Like one that claims GPT-6 broke an Enigma enciphered message which has withstood decrypting for almost 80 years. And how this seasoned cryptographer stood in awe. Yeah, right.

   1. 0xDEAFBEAD · 1790166517 · focus · HN ↗

      A good way to check whether it's substance vs hype is to check whether people are paying for it.

      "Anthropic is now pacing to generate more than $100 billion in annual revenue, up 50% from just two months ago, the New York Times reported Friday."

      <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.axios.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;18&#x2F;anthropic-100-billion-revenue" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.axios.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;18&#x2F;anthropic-100-billion-reven...

      That&#x27;s already more revenue that Disney, Johnson &amp; Johnson, Boeing, or FedEx. And they are growing extremely rapidly.

      1. hn_submit · 1790192862 · focus · HN ↗

         How much of that revenue is investment from other A.I. companies (NVIDIA, Microsoft) being tallied?

         Are companies really spending millions a year on A.I. when software engineers can be had for much less?

         1. 0xDEAFBEAD · 1790221651 · focus · HN ↗

            Why would investment from other AI companies be tallied as revenue?

            1. hn_submit · 1790259471 · focus · HN ↗

               Because accountancy rules don&#x27;t expressly forbid it?
      2. j_w · 1790197067 · focus · HN ↗

         Not sure why you linked an axios article that just immediately refers to a times article.

         <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;xaImK#selection-8311.59-8311.77" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;xaImK#selection-8311.59-8311.77

         &gt; The company is expected to reach more than $100 billion in annualized revenue by the end of this year, according to four people familiar with the matter.

         It&#x27;s not really interesting if it&#x27;s not according to Anthropic themselves. It&#x27;s also revenue not profit.

         1. 0xDEAFBEAD · 1790221612 · focus · HN ↗

            Revenue is what answers the question of whether people are willing to pay for the product. If people are paying a lot of money, that proves that there is substance to the product, regardless of whether the product is being sold profitably.

            In any case, I understand they are still planning to IPO in November, so we&#x27;ll likely know soon enough. I highly doubt that they would wildly distort their numbers so close to their IPO.

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