Is There Life After Huang? The Rise of Anthropic, and the AI Rally in the Clouds

This week’s main (anti)hero is Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia: the world’s second-largest company by market capitalization and one of the most important players in the AI market. In the span of five days, the businessman went from being the “godfather of AI” to a man whom the board of directors of the company he founded dismissed from his position as CEO.

This came after reports in the NYT about two extramarital affairs involving the top executive. In one case, his alleged lover was Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence agencies suspect of spying for China. In the other, it was Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. Huang himself admitted to the infidelity but did not provide any details. After his resignation, Reuters reported on a third affair the businessman had—also with an Nvidia employee. Honestly, the number of leaked secrets is growing faster than Nvidia’s revenue. Speaking of which, we’ll find out more on November 17, when the company releases its results for the last quarter.

Nvidia shares, which were already struggling, plummeted 12% over four trading days, hitting a one-year low. Analysts are divided on what will happen next, but at least six investment banks have downgraded the company’s stock ratings. Some see a buying opportunity, while others are more cautious. Well-known short seller Michael Burry has decided to sit this one out, while others are advising investors to sell. We’ve examined various scenarios for how the situation might unfold. Oninvest CEO Elena Tofanyuk explained on Instagram what portion of Nvidia’s massive market capitalization is specifically tied to Huang.

Where should you invest if not in Nvidia? Analysts cited AMD (led by Huang’s relative, Lisa Su), Broadcom and Marvell, as well as Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, which manufacture or develop their own chips. In addition, experts highlighted Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and Palantir.

Colette Kress, Nvidia ’s CFO, has been appointed acting CEO. She said that when she joined the company in 2013, Nvidia was the smallest of all the companies she had worked for (kudos for her honesty!). Personally, I think the currently unemployed former Apple CEO Tim Cook would be a good fit for Nvidia, and U.S. President Donald Trump agrees with me. Perhaps he has already renamed “Tim Apple” to “Tim Nvidia” in his phone.

The one who is remaining the quietest right now is Lori Huang, who has been married to Jensen for over 40 years. It is unknown whether they signed a prenuptial agreement, but Huang’s stake in Nvidia is apparently shared with his wife, according to Forbes. And theoretically, Lori could claim half of their joint assets, which amount to at least $70 billion. Mackenzie Scott (née Bezos) and Melinda French Gates could probably recommend some good lawyers .

Anthropic, the world's second-most-valued AI startup, plans to go public next week. It's only second because OpenAI recently surpassed it in estimated valuation (kudos for the timing!).

Claude, the creator of the chatbot, will announce the results of its initial public offering on November 18; trading on the Nasdaq will begin the following day. The company has set a price range of $70–78 per share. This implies a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion. Anthropic expects to raise up to $90.4 billion. If so, it will break the record set by Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX, which raised more than $85 billion in June—albeit with a valuation of $1.75 trillion.

Most analysts consider Anthropic’s valuation justified and say that companies like this “come along once in a generation.” Goldman Sachs has projected that the company’s revenue will grow more than 130-fold by 2030. What should investors expect now? We’ve highlighted five key themes. Advice from billionaire Howard Marks on how to make investment decisions regarding AI may prove particularly timely here. And if you have $10,000, you might find it useful to review where you can invest it to prepare for a potential new downturn in the AI sector.

OpenAI—lest it be completely overshadowed by news about Nvidia and Anthropic— announced that its revenue grew by nearly 50% in the third quarter to $10 billion. In the previous quarter, growth was only 18%. By comparison, Anthropic’s revenue reached $17 billion in the third quarter. Overall, it’s clear why Anthropic is the first to go public, but we’ve taken a closer look at the paths of both companies in our review.

— The earnings report from the non-cloud company CoreWeave gave new momentum to the AI rally. Following the report, not only did other non-cloud companies like Nebius see their stock prices rise, but even Nvidia returned to growth. Nebius also posted solid earnings on Thursday, but investors were disappointed by its weak outlook. We posted a separate Instagram story explaining who CoreWeave and Nebius are and what makes them interesting.

— U.S. inflation exceeded expectations in October. Traders are now virtually certain that the Fed will raise interest rates by 25 basis points in December. However, they do not rule out a 50-basis-point hike. Bloomberg Intelligence forecasts that the rate-hiking cycle will not end until March.

— We’ve published the third issue of our special Oninvest Undercovered newsletter on small- and micro-cap companies. This time, we discussed why a company that manufactures medical devices for heart and vascular surgery in the U.S. might be of interest to investors. According to its CEO, the company has very few competitors, and those it does have use inferior technology (I admire his confidence!). Subscribe! Otherwise, you might accidentally miss out on the rise of yet another “smallest” company.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor