Executive Summary; May Recap

From Anthropic’s $45B ARR surge to the SpaceX IPO, hours of research condensed into a 9-minute read.

I know that for many of you, the most valuable resource is your time. If you don’t have 25 minutes weekly to pore over in depth research, or if you flagged one of my posts as “need to read” and never had the time, this post is for you.

This post is going to be short, and include summaries of every company that I have covered in May. Hours of research on Anthropic, SpaceX, Anduril and Polymarket will be condensed into one brief article. Each one of the recaps should take about 2-3 minutes to read, the whole post will be under ten minutes.

Anthropic: May 4th.

The Breakdown: Anthropic

The Core Thesis:

Anthropic is the developer of the LLM Claude, built to be both the best and most ethical AI model. Despite the company only being founded in 2021, Claude has quickly become one of the fastest growing LLM models, being the preferred LLM choice among enterprise users. Anthropic has proven that users will pay a premium for the highest quality and safest LLM model driving historic revenue expansion reaching $45 billion in ARR in only their fifth year after being founded.

The Eye Opening Numbers:

• 2023: $150 million —— 2024: $1 billion —— 2025: $9 Billion —— February 2026: $14 billion —— April 2026: $30 billion —— May 2026: $45 Billion.¹

• $19 billion in R&D costs in 2026 alone.

• Charge per Million Tokens: Anthropic, $5.00, OpenAI $1.25, Google $1.25.

• Revenue per Paid User: Anthropic, $16.20, OpenAI $2.20, Google, $1.10.²

• 21.4x ARR multiple - high but reasonable for a company growing this quickly.

The Bear Thesis:

Anthropic is burning through capital at an unprecedented rate due to the massive costs associated with running user queries and developing new models. Because AI has very low switching costs, with users changing models based on which one is best today Anthropic is trapped in a paradox. Focus today on profits and their models will likely fall behind. Focus today on their models, profits will lag, limiting VC investments. Anthropic will have dozens of competitors, including Google’s Gemini, who can afford to have profits lag for a few years as they work on improving models and growing user base. Anthropic can’t.

The Verdict:

While there is no longer a question about the macro viability of LLM’s, there are two questions that will likely control Anthropic’s destiny:

Will AI be a winner take all market? And if so, will Anthropic be the winner?

If AI becomes a market that has multiple winners, it is impossible to imagine that Anthropic won’t be one of them. The real risk to Anthropic is that AI becomes a winner takes all market and Google uses their enormous resources to undercut Anthropic. Importantly, the WSJ reported that Anthropic is about to report their first profitable quarter years ahead of schedule.³ As mentioned in my article, a $380 billion valuation was significantly undervalued. Today at a $965 billion valuation, they are likely still hugely undervalued, they might not 10x from here but the rapid growth velocity indicates there likely is still lots of room to grow.

While all of my full breakdowns are free to read, the rest of this post about SpaceX, Anduril and Polymarket is for paid subscribers only. Upgrade to our premium plan for subscriber Zoom calls, extra content and a choice of what company you want next. Get institutional intelligence on your own schedule.

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Thank you all for the support, and now, onto SpaceX.