BREAKING: Major investors are “increasingly skeptical” that Anthropic’s IPO can proceed at the expected valuation of $1.5 trillion after today’s market drop, per WSJ. One major investor said Anthropic’s valuation will need to come down to $1 trillion. This marks a major reversal from the $2+ trillion closing market cap expected by markets just months ago. Anthropic has been planning to IPO prior to Thanksgiving. It’s unclear if today’s crash will impact that timeline.

Today, Zipline raised $1.5b at a $21.5b valuation. When we started Zipline, flying autonomously in the US was illegal. Which made it really hard to convince investors to give us money! But we were too naive to think that meant we shouldn’t try. We started the company on a cow farm. We worked out of run-down construction trailers so that we could keep engineering, manufacturing, and flight test all unified and in one place. Hiring people from normal companies like Google was hard because we didn’t have a cafe or laundry service. But enough risk takers and rebels wanted to go on an insane adventure with us. They became the early team. We decided to launch in smaller countries and focus on life-saving use cases. We hired incredible entrepreneurs and operators in Rwanda, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, and other countries. For eight years, Zipline expanded our service across Africa, serving thousands of hospitals and health facilities and reducing maternal mortality by 51%. Today, the network saves over 14k lives every year and is cash flow positive. Last year, Zipline launched at scale in the US and the service exploded. We grew flight volumes about 100x over the last 18 months, and now make more than a million deliveries a year per metro. We’re now expanding with our partners to millions of deliveries per day. Normal families love having access to anything they need in 10-20 minutes, no matter where they live. Spend more time with loved ones and less time worrying about errands. Zipline builds drone delivery that is silent and safe. No one wants to hear an extremely loud “swarm of bees” delivering to their backyard or their neighbor’s. Automated delivery needs to be insanely quiet, which guided the overall architecture of our technology delivering from 330 ft in the air. We are 6 times quieter than the closest competitor during delivery. Zipline also now has over 150m commercial autonomous miles (10x the rest of the industry combined) and no safety incidents. Neighborhoods should demand silent and safe delivery! Today, Zipline is announcing two things. First, we just signed the largest autonomous vehicle contract in human history to expand automated delivery nationally with Walmart, our first and biggest partner in the US. We’re starting by scaling to 300 supercenters throughout the country. Second, we’ve raised $1.5b at a $21.5b valuation from existing and new investors, led by Paradigm, WCM, and Layer. Zipline was a hard company to believe in for the first ten years of our history. Investors didn’t think the company was “investable”. Most people didn’t even think Zipline was an economic venture. Thanks to those who have rooted for us along the way. To all of the tens of millions of customers and families who rely on Zipline day in and day out: thank you for helping us build the future. Zipline has grown more than @ryanzip, @keenanwyrobek, I, and all others at the company could have imagined. There is a big opportunity to build a new layer of infrastructure for humanity over the coming years. We want to approximate teleportation. We can build a logistics network that connects and serves all people on earth. We can free human flourishing from the choking constraint of traffic and roads. There are no roads where we’re going. 🚀🌎

The votes are in. The tape is reacting. @AviFelman & @jvb_xyz on what the midterms actually change for markets — and what they don't. 🔴 LIVE @ 1pm ET on 𝕏 + @YouTube 👇 LINK:

S1s always contain unleaked bangers. Look out for: -goblin mode compute commitments -p(doom) risks -“community adjusted EBITDA” -forward financing needs that far exceed available capital -unlock dates (CA real estate trade)

In this new episode, @jvb_xyz tells @AviFelman he's been of the “nothing ever happens” mindset for years. But this week he came back worried — and not about the thing everyone else is worried about. All that, plus: • CoreWeave’s Bonds Are In Distress • The $334B Hole In AI Cash Flow • Why The Neo Clouds Get Eaten • Why Compute Futures Never Happen • $10M A Year Selling Donuts In Iraq OUT NOW on @YouTube & @Spotify👇

Life is short. Skeptics are probably right more often than they are wrong, but they also don't go on epic adventures or get to work on projects that move humanity forward. Ignore the skeptics and build the future!

Ben Affleck says AI is simply matrix multiplication, linear algebra and floating point calculations, and however convincingly it sounds like a person, it has nothing to do with thought, humanity or feeling “Nor do I believe, and I think it’s important to draw the distinction between what AI does, which is simply predict the next token or the next word in a sentence, then add that word on, run it back to the machine, do a lot of computation and pick the next word." "That is a very different thing than sentience or thought. And I think we need to be really clear about that because it can be convincingly, in an illusory way, sound like thought or like a person." "But let’s be real clear. This is matrix multiplication. This is linear algebra. These are floating point calculations. It has nothing to do with thought, humanity, or feeling.”