OpenAI completed a $7 billion internal share buyback the same week it lost both COO Brad Lightcap and CRO Denise Dresser. Dresser left after eight months, likely forfeiting tens of millions in pre-IPO stock options. That is not the behavior of someone who believes the IPO is coming, or worth waiting for.
Anthropic is not a safe harbor. Reuters reported Wall Street is valuing Anthropic on projected 2028 revenues of $190 billion to $200 billion, explicitly setting aside current EBITDA because it does not, quote, fully capture the economics investors expect at scale. That sentence is not analysis. It is a permission slip to ignore an actual business in favor of a theoretical one. The FT separately ran investor-sourced claims of a $2 trillion valuation and $100 to $120 billion in annualized 2026 revenue. Neither outlet pushed back meaningfully.
The piece is worth reading in full not for its conclusion but for how it tracks the specific mechanics of how hype manufacturing works in financial press, who benefits, and what the exit behavior of senior executives actually signals about internal confidence at these companies. Zitron is on Signal at ezitron.76 if you have sourced information on Anthropic or OpenAI.
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