Jensen Huang's Resignation from NVIDIA Sparks Turmoil: Anthropic's Most Significant AI IPO in History Faces a Tough Test
Author: Beatrice Nolan, Allie Garfinkle, Fortune
Translated by: TechFlow
TechFlow Preview: As one of the leading AI unicorns valued at tens of billions of dollars, Anthropic is about to face its major test in the public capital markets. However, NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang's sudden resignation on Thursday has cast an unexpected shadow over this already highly anticipated IPO.
NVIDIA not only committed to subscribing to approximately $10 billion worth of shares in the private placement accompanying Anthropic's IPO, but also heavily tied its future compute procurement agreements. Although the listing plan will likely proceed as scheduled in the short term, the shock from a core ally will inevitably direct market scrutiny toward the first quarterly earnings report and ultimately the resilience of the entire AI business model.
Major Listing Preceded by Shocking Ally Upheaval
Anthropic is set to launch one of the most closely watched IPOs in tech history. Yet following a highly dramatic twist, the AI lab must now face public market scrutiny just one week after the industry lost its most powerful leader and best advocate.
On Thursday, NVIDIA long-time CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang announced his resignation. He had previously been implicated in allegations regarding two improper relationships, one with an individual reportedly suspected by U.S. intelligence agencies as a Chinese intelligence asset, and another with a NVIDIA executive who reported directly to him.
This timing adds fresh pressure to Anthropic's listing. The transaction was already viewed as a stress test to gauge how much appetite global investors truly have for the AI narrative. According to the established schedule, Anthropic is expected to go public next Wednesday or Thursday.
Notably, this listing date falls just days after NVIDIA releases its latest quarterly earnings, marking the first time in company history that it will disclose quarterly results without Jensen Huang at the helm.
A Deeply Tied Billions-Dollar Compute Alliance
NVIDIA serves as both a core technological ally to Anthropic and plays a deeply involved role in its current listing process. According to Anthropic's filing documents, NVIDIA has agreed to subscribe to approximately $10 billion in shares during the $26 billion private placement accompanying the IPO.
The two companies are equally bound on a commercial level. Anthropic has previously committed hundreds of billions of dollars to secure long-term priority allocation quotas for NVIDIA's newest generation of high-performance computing chips.
Multiple investors and industry analysts who spoke with Fortune stated that while NVIDIA's sudden executive shakeup is not expected to directly disrupt Anthropic's core operations, it will likely trigger ripple effects across the broader AI narrative.
Listing Timeline Unchanged, but Post-IPO Scrutiny Will Intensify
Jay Goldberg, an analyst at Seaport Research Partners and one of the very few on Wall Street maintaining a "sell" rating on NVIDIA stock, believes Huang's sudden departure will not derail the deal. He noted that the company will go public as scheduled, just prior to NVIDIA's earnings call.
Goldberg emphasized that the massive scale of this IPO and the deeply intertwined interests of the parties involved mean that institutions will not easily withdraw their applications. However, he simultaneously pointed out that more significant potential risks actually lie in wait for Anthropic after it becomes a publicly traded company.
While rumors of Huang's resignation were circulating, Goldberg had already warned that NVIDIA's turmoil and the loss of its leadership would pose tangible headwinds when Anthropic releases its first quarterly earnings. At that point, the market will inevitably ask: "Can the AI growth narrative sustain itself? How far can this burn-rate-heavy model go?"
Custom Chips and Multi-Vendor Buffer Zones
M13 partner Karl Alomar similarly believes that Anthropic's fundamentals remain intact. In his view, the company still holds a highly competitive position, boasts strong financial metrics, and demonstrates excellent redundancy and capital efficiency in its compute reserves.
Compared to other major competitors, Anthropic relies less heavily on NVIDIA's singular hardware architecture. Its internal models are deployed not only on NVIDIA hardware but also widely run across Google TPUs, Amazon Trainium chips, and AMD GPU clusters.
Additionally, multiple sources indicate that Anthropic is actively advancing plans to develop its own custom chips. Former Wharton professor and investigative journalist Francine McKenna analyzed that NVIDIA's previous commitment to contribute $10 billion to the IPO will most likely still materialize, but external expectations for NVIDIA to indefinitely underwrite the compute ecosystem may cool down.
A Major Liquidity Test for Silicon Valley and Potential Contrarian Benefits
Jason Schloetzer, associate professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, believes that external doubts regarding NVIDIA's internal governance could spill over to its ecosystem partners. Regulatory bodies and the market will likely scrutinize Anthropic's business ties with NVIDIA and its customer base even more rigorously.
For the Silicon Valley venture capital community, Anthropic and competitor OpenAI have absorbed vast amounts of capital over the past few years. Nearly every mainstream VC holds stakes in both, effectively making them a "private-market AI index fund."
Therefore, Anthropic's listing next week concerns not only the exit liquidity for the more than 400 underlying investment firms, but also serves as the decisive factor in measuring whether the entire AI wave can continue forward. If successful, the AI investment runway will extend further; if met with cold reception or delayed, it will be viewed as a strong bearish signal that the bubble has peaked.
However, not everyone views the situation pessimistically. Some VCs even see potential upside. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has long advocated for stricter export controls on chips, which diverges from the stance Jensen Huang previously took to prevent customers from facing adoption barriers.
An unnamed senior AI investor stated outright that Anthropic could even be a beneficiary of this executive upheaval. The relationship between the two sides had not been without friction. With shifts in NVIDIA's control structure and the advancement of Anthropic's custom chip development, a reshaping of the supply chain landscape might ironically open up more flexible development space for Anthropic.