Khosla Ventures Managing Director Keith Rabois stated that the most disruptive factor for the venture capital-supported AI ecosystem is any short-term decline following the IPOs of Anthropic or OpenAI. He pointed out that the market currently prices these two companies at a trillion-dollar scale, and if their revenue or profit margins in the first month to the following quarters post-IPO fall short of expectations, confidence will be rewritten.

Rabois mentioned that this would immediately reset nearly all AI valuations and could cut off funding for about half of the companies currently raising capital. He did not assert that this would necessarily happen and believes that if it does, it is more likely to occur in profit margins rather than revenue. His logic is that the scale of new investment dollars is built on the premise of "creating trillion-dollar companies within a fund's lifecycle," and currently, there are only a few benchmark examples; once it becomes impossible to predict more trillion-dollar companies, the existing bids and investment volumes become invalid.

Both labs have submitted confidential registration drafts to the U.S. SEC, expected around June 2026, with market rumors valuing them from nearly a trillion to higher ranges, and reports also suggest Anthropic is aiming for a higher IPO price. Public discussions are also focusing on whether open-source models can drive down prices, and whether computing expenses and profit margins can support high price-to-sales ratios. Rabois emphasized that he is not predicting a collapse but pointing out that pricing anchors are highly concentrated on the performance of these two public companies.

In market mechanisms, buyers are VCs discounting the application and tool layers as the "next trillion," while sellers are the two model companies about to become public benchmarks; the driver is the confirmation of revenue and profit margins post-IPO, rather than another round of private equity stories. Funds are flowing from private equity premiums to pricing that can stand firm on exchanges. Beneficiaries are follow-on investment targets after successful IPOs and passing profit margins, while those under pressure are mid-to-late-stage financing companies still pricing based on trillion-dollar narratives, and the labs themselves that must deliver profit margins within a few quarters.

Source: Public Information