TL;DR: Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO yesterday, jumping ahead of rival OpenAI in the race to go public—but rising Claude costs and a looming SpaceX listing could complicate its big moment.

What happened: Anthropic is fresh off a $65 billion fundraising round that valued the company at $965 billion, making it the most valuable private AI company on the planet. An IPO is expected as early as October. While everyone’s got plenty of takes, here are the three things worth knowing:

1. Anthropic was notably noncommittal in its announcement, hedging that the move “gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review.” It’s a caveat that's both unnecessary and unusual, as companies don't typically leave themselves that kind of public off-ramp when they file.
2. The first-mover advantage is critical for Anthropic in a race against rival OpenAI. Historically, businesses in similar sectors go public in a “cluster,” and those that go later tend to be less successful. Plus, with a SpaceX mega-listing in the mix, the earlier IPOs are likely to gobble up available capital. But moving first only works when the IPO meets expectations—some analysts are reminded of the Lyft-Uber IPO debacle in 2019, when Lyft’s market debut didn’t live up to its hype and its subsequent decline directly impacted Uber’s listing two months later. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for his part, downplayed the IPO race on CNBC.
3. Anthropic is heading toward a public offering just as companies—its biggest customers—are hitting an AI spending wall. Switching to cheaper models has become more appealing as “some open source LLMs are as good without the price tag,” Mill co-founder Matt Rogers told Axios. Any meaningful corporate pullback could undercut Anthropic’s revenue at the same moment investors are scrutinizing it.

What’s next: Anthropic hasn’t set a valuation yet, though details are expected later this year after SpaceX’s IPO. How much oxygen is left in the room after that listing may determine what Anthropic's public debut actually looks like. —LC

Also at Anthropic…

• It’s expanding access to its powerful cyber Mythos model to 150 new organizations.
• Amazon could hit the jackpot if Anthropic goes public.

This app lets you AirDrop between iPhone and Android

If you live in an iPhone-Android household like me, you’ve felt this particular sort of pain. You want to send a photo to your loved one (or many, in my case)—and suddenly a simple task turns into a whole debate about which messaging platform is the best just to get a high-res image from Point A to Point B. Despite Google’s announcement in November that Android’s Quick Share would start working with AirDrop, that seamless interoperability hasn’t quite made its way to all devices yet.

In the meantime, here’s a solution that has worked well for me: the Blip app. Download the app and create an account, then head to Settings and make sure the Searchable by Name toggle is on so that your friends don’t have to enter your full email address to send you things.

To send files in the app: Search for the person you’re sending files to by name, select your files, and hit send.

To send files from your photo album: Select the files you want to send and hit the share button, then tap the Blip icon.

The other person gets a notification and accepts the transfer. No compression, no drama, just a million pictures of you in the same pose. —LC

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Movie theaters are packed like it’s Barbenheimer summer again—but this time, the popular double feature is two horror movies directed by 20-something YouTubers. Backrooms, based on a viral internet horror story about being stuck in liminal office spaces, pulled in A24’s biggest opening weekend ever. Obsession, meanwhile, just became the first movie since E.T. to increase its box office take in both its second and third weekends. Some of the runaway success might be due to both directors having pre-existing, very online fanbases.

And that could also be part of the problem: These particular movies are drawing in less-than-ideal moviegoers. Social media is full of complaints about people recording clips of “pivotal plot points” and talking loudly through screenings. One X user groused about someone using their phone’s flashlight to illuminate the sushi they were chowing down on—while another person posted a thread of their whole moviegoing experience, implying that, yes, they had their phone out the entire time. Hollywood has spent years begging audiences to come back to the big screen. Mission accomplished—now, if only they’d put that second screen away. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: /5