Authors: Beatrice Nolan, Allie Garfinkle, fortune

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: As a leading AI unicorn valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, Anthropic is facing a significant test in the capital markets with its upcoming IPO. However, NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang's unexpected resignation on Thursday casts an unforeseen shadow over this highly anticipated IPO.

NVIDIA not only committed to purchasing about $10 billion worth of shares in the accompanying private placement for Anthropic's IPO, but also deeply integrated future computing power procurement agreements. While the IPO plans are likely to proceed on schedule in the short term, the shock to its core ally will inevitably push market inquiries toward the first quarterly report and the overall resilience of the AI business model.

Major ally shaken just before a significant IPO

Anthropic is about to launch one of the most anticipated IPOs in technology history. However, following a dramatic upheaval, this AI lab must now face public market scrutiny just a week after losing one of the industry's most powerful leaders and best salespeople.

On Thursday, NVIDIA's longtime CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang announced his resignation. Reports had previously surfaced claiming he was involved in two violations allegations, one alleged to be related to a person suspected by U.S. intelligence agencies of being a Chinese intelligence asset, and another being an NVIDIA executive who reported directly to him.

This timing brings new pressure for Anthropic's listing, which was already seen as a stress test for global investors' genuine appetite for the AI narrative. According to plans, Anthropic is expected to be listed next Wednesday or Thursday.

Notably, this listing date comes just days after the release of NVIDIA's latest quarterly report, which is also the first time NVIDIA has disclosed quarterly results without Jensen Huang at the helm.

Deeply bound $10 billion computing power alliance

NVIDIA is not only Anthropic's core technology ally but also deeply involved in the latter's IPO process. According to Anthropic's filing documents, NVIDIA has agreed to purchase about $10 billion worth of shares in the $26 billion private placement accompanying the IPO.

The two companies have also formed a deep integration on a commercial level. Anthropic had previously committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars to secure a long-term priority supply quota of NVIDIA's latest generation of high-performance computing chips.

Several investors and industry analysts interviewed by Fortune magazine stated that although the sudden personnel turmoil at NVIDIA is not expected to directly impact Anthropic's current core business operations, it could have broader ripple effects on the AI narrative.

IPO process unchanged, but subsequent scrutiny tougher

Jay Goldberg, a Seaport Research Partners analyst and one of the few on Wall Street maintaining a "sell" rating on NVIDIA stock, believes Jensen Huang's sudden departure will not disrupt the transaction. He stated they will proceed with the IPO as scheduled before NVIDIA's earnings call.

Goldberg emphasized that the scale of this IPO is immense, and the interests involved are tangled, making it unlikely for institutions to withdraw their listing applications easily. However, he also pointed out that more significant potential risks actually lie ahead after Anthropic becomes a publicly traded company.

During the period of speculation surrounding Huang's departure, Goldberg had warned that the turmoil at NVIDIA and the loss of its leader would pose real obstacles when Anthropic releases its first quarterly results. The market will inevitably question: “Can the AI growth narrative be sustained? How far can this cash-burning model go?”

Self-developed chips and multi-vendor buffer zone

Karl Alomar, a partner at venture capital firm M13, also believes that Anthropic's fundamentals remain intact. In his view, Anthropic is still in a very strong competitive position, with excellent financial performance and showing great redundancy and capital efficiency in its computing power reserves.

Compared to other major competitors, Anthropic's dependency on NVIDIA's single hardware architecture is relatively low. Its internal models are not only deployed on NVIDIA hardware but also widely run on Google TPUs, Amazon Trainium chips, and AMD's GPU clusters.

Additionally, multiple sources have revealed that Anthropic is actively promoting the research and development of self-developed custom chips. Former Wharton School professor and investigative journalist Francine McKenna analyzed that NVIDIA's previous commitment to invest $10 billion in the IPO is likely to be fulfilled, but external expectations for NVIDIA to infinitely support the computing power ecosystem may cool down.

Silicon Valley liquidity challenge and potential contrasting benefits

Jason Schloetzer, an associate professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, believes that external doubts about NVIDIA's internal governance may spread to its ecosystem partners, with regulators and the market likely to scrutinize the business relations between Anthropic and NVIDIA as well as its client base more rigorously.

For the Silicon Valley venture capital community, Anthropic and its competitor OpenAI have absorbed an extraordinary amount of capital over the past few years, to the extent that almost every mainstream VC holds equity in both, essentially becoming "AI index funds" in the primary market to some extent.

Therefore, Anthropic's IPO next week not only relates to the liquidity exit of over 400 investment institutions behind it, but also serves as a litmus test for whether the entire AI wave can continue to move forward. If successful, the runway for AI investment will be extended; if met with cold reception or delay, it will be seen as a strong negative signal for a bubble peak.

However, not everyone views it pessimistically. Some venture capitalists even see potential benefits. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has long advocated for stricter controls on chip exports, which contrasts with Jensen Huang's previous strong avoidance of imposing barriers on clients.

A senior AI investor who wished to remain anonymous stated that Anthropic could even benefit from this personnel upheaval. Their previous relationship was not without its tensions, and as NVIDIA's control shifts and Anthropic advances its self-developed chips, the reshaping of the supply chain may instead open up more flexible development space for Anthropic.