Nov 9, 2026 · 1h 46m
AI spending cools as Anthropic and Atlassian face valuation tests
Is Anthropic's IPO Dead? Jensen Honeypot Scandal, Atlassian Share Price Crash and we speak with Tech Legend Sam Kroonenburg about his $2 Billion Exit and Starting Again
The episode connects slowing AI economics and investor skepticism with the harder work of building durable, profitable technology companies.
- 1AI spending and agent enthusiasm are cooling, while unclear attribution makes the commercial payoff difficult to measure.
- 2Anthropic’s IPO prospects face pressure from valuation, compute needs, private-market expectations, and strategic dependence on the United States.
- 3Sam Kroonenburg explains how selling Cloud Guru reduced personal risk before rebuilding Cuttable around focused product-market fit.
Don't miss
Sam Kroonenburg explains why Cuttable reset after signing too many enterprise customers, burning roughly half its seed funding, and losing focus.
The brief
The hosts question whether Jensen Huang’s controversy could expose Nvidia’s dependence on a near-deified founder, while slowing AI spending raises broader market risks.
AI’s commercial story is becoming harder to read: token use is rising, but budgets, agent economics, and the value of AI-referred shoppers remain uncertain.
Anthropic’s proposed IPO becomes a test of whether private-market AI valuations can survive enormous compute demands, Chinese competition, and weaker investor enthusiasm.
Atlassian’s improving revenue, cloud growth, margins, and operating income still met a harsh market response after weaker forward guidance, underscoring the cost of valuation expectations.
Sam Kroonenburg discusses selling Cloud Guru for more than US$2 billion, taking secondary liquidity, and rebuilding Cuttable after an early enterprise-focused misstep.
His central lesson is that global growth requires customer love, focused software, and scalable distribution—not bespoke work disguised as product-market fit.
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