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Comment by cloudbonsai | Hacker News Reader

This is correct. Out of the $80.7B loss, $72.4B was due to changes in the fair value of their convertible notes (and similar financial arrangements).

Going a bit meta, I'm curious why we don't observe a faster convergence of opinions here. I assume that HN users are well-versed in AI tech, and the current generation of LLMs will happily break down the relevant information in Form S-1. Nevertheless, we see a chaotic storm of opinions, with wildly varying S/N ratios.

Is it a limit of current LLMs, or is the bottleneck perhaps human nature?

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Yes but those convertible notes only exist to grant them access to compute they would otherwise need to pay fair market value for.

If I drive a taxi making $200/day and need $150/day of gas.. but convince Shell to take a convertible note instead of $150.. Do I make a) $200/day profit, b) $50/day profit, or c) $200/day - (change_in_value[convertible_note]) in profit?

Some are arguing that C is somehow fake, but its obviously more real than A!

Your point is fair.

Another big component of the $80B loss was $3B in stock-based compensation. This line item is very expense-like (“instead of paying your drivers in cash, give them shares of your taxi company”), and Anthropic also adjusts it away when reporting their adjusted net income. Without this adjustment, their non-GAAP operating income was negative in 2026 1H.

Overall, I feel like a man in the parable of The Elephant in the Dark while writing this. Not only is my sight limited, but this elephant (Anthropic) is dancing wildly!

Human nature. Obviously we know some things are just true. It's common sense! Why would I invite a non-deterministic hallucination machine that can't think to challenge my world view with something inconvenient like facts?

People are emotionally invested in a deflation and slowdown in AI because they feel threatened by AI. They'll cling to reeds of hope and wilfully misread financial stats to make themselves feel better.

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