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The idiom \u201cfeeding frenzy\u201d gained prominence in the mid-century, first primarily to describe the behavior of sharks frenetically ripping into large schools of fish. It\u2019s chaotic, ruthless, and triggered by the perception of abundance. And I suspect the phrase gained popularity both because it\u2019s evocative, and because there\u2019s more than one kind of shark out there. And right now, quite a few sharks are circling the secondaries market around Anthropic, which is widely expected to go public this year (as is rival OpenAI).\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve missed the ruckus: Anthropic, the maker of Claude and last publicly valued at a now-quaint $380 billion, is raising a new round of funding\u2014the company\u2019s reportedly looking to rake in as much as $50 billion at a valuation in the $900 billion ballpark. And talking to brokers, investors, and founders about it, they all had the same, clear message: This is not normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnthropic has all this clumped-up, pent-up demand, and it\u2019s like a pressure cooker ready to explode,\u201d said Hari Raghavan, an angel investor and founder who\u2019s currently starting a new fund with longtime private capital markets executive Clara Vydyanath. \u201cIf you have pent-up demand and a lack of clean paths you can use to vent the exhaust, what happens is that the whole thing blows up.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the demand for Anthropic is explosive, four industry insiders agreed. At the start of this decade, Anthropic didn\u2019t exist, and this year, the company\u2019s ostensibly set to take in $45 billion. This reported (and eye-watering) figure appears to be annualized revenue run rate, which is definitionally dicey\u2014it\u2019s a snapshot-estimate of where revenue will land if recent pace holds. That number isn\u2019t reality, not yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But reality isn\u2019t the driving force around the tidal wave of demand for Anthropic shares. It all started in late April, when Anthropic put out a call for investor allocations: The message? You want a block of Anthropic shares, you have 48 hours to submit the size of your offer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The result: a market so frothy people are willing to wire hundreds of thousands of dollars to a broker, without verifying if the shares they\u2019re buying are even real. Read my full story here.<\/p>\n
Have a great long weekend and we\u2019ll see you Tuesday,<\/p>\n
Allie Garfinkle Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.<\/p>\n Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today\u2019s newsletter<\/em>.<\/em> Subscribe here.<\/p>\n – <\/span>Farther<\/b>, a New York City-based digital wealth management platform for financial advisors, raised $150 million in Series D funding. <\/span>General<\/b> Atlantic<\/b> led the round and was joined by existing investors.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Pivot<\/b>, a Paris, France-based AI-powered procurement management platform, raised $40 million in Series B funding. <\/span>Notion<\/b> Capital<\/b> and <\/span>Forestay<\/b> led the round and were joined by <\/span>Greyhound Capital<\/b> and others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>REPS<\/b>, a Tyrol, Austria-based developer of road-embedded technology that harvests energy from vehicle traffic, raised $23.6 million in funding from undisclosed investors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>The Path<\/b>, a San Francisco-based AI-powered virtual wardrobe and personal styling platform, raised $14.3 million in seed funding. <\/span>Prime<\/b> Movers<\/b> Lab<\/b> led the round and was joined by <\/span>Apolo<\/b> Anton<\/b> Ohno<\/b>, <\/span>Deontay<\/b> Wilder<\/b>, <\/span>Designer<\/b> Fund<\/b>, and others.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>V\u00eatir<\/b>, a New York City-based AI-powered luxury wardrobe platform, raised $5.5 million in Series A funding from <\/span>Laidlaw & Company<\/b> and others.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Shatterdome<\/b> Energy<\/b>, a Dover, Del.-based AI-powered battery storage and energy trading platform, raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding. <\/span>Crucible<\/b> Capital<\/b> led the round.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Accel-KKR<\/b> acquired a majority stake in <\/span>UpKeep<\/b>, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based AI-powered maintenance management (CMMS) and asset operations platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Advantage<\/b> Distribution<\/b> Holdings<\/b>, backed by <\/span>Tigertail<\/b> Capital<\/b> Partners<\/b>, acquired <\/span>cfm<\/b> Distributors<\/b>, a Kansas City, Mo.-based HVACR distributor. Financial terms were not disclosed.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Bregal<\/b> Sagemount<\/b> and <\/span>Ardian<\/b> acquired a majority stake in <\/span>Ennov<\/b>, a Paris, France-based provider of regulatory and quality management software for life sciences companies. Financial terms were not disclosed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Corten<\/b> Capital<\/b> acquired <\/span>Beacon Intelligence<\/b>, a London, U.K.-based data and workflow platform for life sciences R&D, from <\/span>Graphite<\/b> Capital<\/b>. Financial terms were not disclosed.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Analog<\/b> Devices<\/b> agreed to acquire <\/span>Empower<\/b> Semiconductor<\/b>, a Milpitas, Calif.-based power delivery company for AI, for $1.5 billion in cash.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>a16z<\/b>, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm, hired <\/span>Peter<\/b> Levine<\/b> as a General Partner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Capitol<\/b> Meridian<\/b> Partners<\/b>, a Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm, hired <\/span>Ryan<\/b> McCarthy<\/b> as an Operating Partner. McCarthy previously served as U.S. Secretary of the Army.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #pressure #cooker #ready #explode #wild #secondaries #scramble #Anthropic #shares<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The idiom \u201cfeeding frenzy\u201d gained prominence in the mid-century, first primarily to describe the behavior of sharks frenetically ripping into large schools of fish. It\u2019s chaotic, ruthless, and triggered by… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[536,5791,743,5792,676,960,2261,5794,5793,32,1843,963,568,2675],"class_list":["post-3523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-anthropic","tag-cooker","tag-elon-musk","tag-explode","tag-pressure","tag-private-equity","tag-ready","tag-scramble","tag-secondaries","tag-shares","tag-spacex","tag-term-sheet","tag-venture-capital","tag-wild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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