Brad Gerstner on SpaceX IPO, Anthropic's historic growth, the SaaS multiple reckoning, and Trump Accounts launching July 4

Brad Gerstner on Anthropic, the SaaS multiple reckoning, and Trump Accounts

Anthropic as the market's load-bearing wall

Anthropic is the fastest-growing company in the history of capitalism, according to Gerstner — and he argues the entire AI equity narrative depends on it. "Had Anthropic not delivered its revenues this year, I think the stock market would be down 10 or 15%." OpenAI and Google posted solid numbers, but neither blew away expectations. Anthropic did, and it did so at high gross margins, with a path to positive free cash flow in Q2. That combination is what drove the market's recovery from being down on the year just two months ago.

Altimeter just recorded two of the biggest months in its 18-year history, which Gerstner attributes partly to stock selection in memory and logic, and partly to companies simply delivering. Dell's AI server revenue went from $1B to $16B — up 750% year over year. The numbers are real.

Token ROI — the bear case doesn't hold

Altimeter surveyed 300 enterprises on token spend and optimization. Even among companies actively cutting back, the group still expects API token usage to grow more than 50% over the next 12 months. Companies planning to optimize expect 90% growth. Gerstner's read is that the bears have moved the goalposts — first arguing AI revenue wouldn't show up at all, now arguing it's all waste with no ROI — and neither version survives contact with the data.

The more durable point is penetration. Coding is just beginning to diffuse through enterprises. Knowledge work is barely started. And the universe of companies actually using AI at all is still small. Gerstner expects Anthropic and OpenAI to grow through any near-term optimization because the penetration curve on both use cases and enterprises is still so steep.

He also pushes back on the supply-side worry with a specific analogy. In 1999 there was dark fiber — infrastructure laid with no traffic on it. There is not a dark GPU in the world today. Every major hyperscaler reported being token-constrained on their last earnings call: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic. Physical limits on wafer supply and power constrain how fast tokens can come online, which is a structurally different setup than the dot-com overbuild.

“Anthropic is the fastest growing company in the history of capitalism. Had Anthropic not delivered its revenues that it's delivered this year, I think the stock market would be down 10 or 15%... There's not a dark GPU in the world today. The world demands more intelligence. Intelligence can only be produced with tokens, and we have physical limits to the amount of tokens we're gonna be able to bring online.”

SaaS multiples — the reset isn't over

Software has corrected from a premium-to-market multiple down to roughly 22–23x GAAP earnings, about in line with the broader market. Gerstner's argument is that this may not be the floor. Nvidia, the most essential component in AI, trades at around 13x earnings on 70% growth. Many software names trade at roughly twice that multiple. If a company is demonstrably in the token flow — its revenue scales with token consumption — it deserves a premium. If AI improvements make its core product worse over time, it should trade below market.

Gerstner puts most software names in the "too hard" basket for now. The bifurcation is already visible. Snowflake was up 35% in a single session after proving it sits in the token flow — database queries at Altimeter are growing faster than token usage. Databricks and ClickHouse are in the same camp. Salesforce is harder: its front-facing products compete with the models rather than enabling them, and Gerstner is openly skeptical, though he adds that if anyone can find a way in, Marc Benioff will.

Compute as the investment frame

Altimeter has run close to 100% AI and compute in its public portfolio for three years. At current multiples — Hynix and Micron on single-digit multiples, Nvidia at 13x — Gerstner argues the cheapest multiple Nvidia has traded at in a decade is hiding in plain sight. He's pushing Jensen Huang to raise the free cash flow return to shareholders from 50% toward 70–75%, drawing an explicit parallel to Buffett's Apple entry after Apple committed to aggressive buybacks.

On early-stage, Altimeter is largely avoiding Series B and C software companies in the $5–15B range. The firm's biggest bets are concentrated in OpenAI and Anthropic, consuming billions. Everything else in the early-stage book is oriented around compute, semiconductors, data center infrastructure, and military modernization.

Invest America / Trump Accounts

The Invest America app launched the day before this conversation and reached the #3 spot in the US App Store, behind only ChatGPT and Duolingo. The program, passed into law last July 4 as part of the "big beautiful bill," goes live on July 4, 2025.

The structure: children born after January 1, 2025 receive $1,000 in an S&P 500 account; children aged 2–10 receive $250. The accounts are private, titled to the family, and lock until age 18. Michael and Susan Dell made a $625M philanthropic gift to fund 25 million accounts. Robinhood and BNY Mellon are platform partners; Joe Gebbia led design.

Additional state-level and individual top-ups are already live. Ray Dalio is covering Connecticut; Gerstner is covering Indiana; Oklahoma is contributing $250 at the state level. Gerstner is targeting a joint bell-ringing at the NYSE and Nasdaq on July 6. Starting in 2027, enrollment will be automatic at birth via Social Security number.

Gerstner's long-range estimate, attributed to the president, is that the program transfers $3–4 trillion in wealth over 15 years to people who currently own zero. His own framing is that going from zero to one is the hardest move in personal finance — and this does it for every American child.

Takeaway: Gerstner's positioning is internally consistent: long compute and token-flow infrastructure, cautious on software without a clear AI wedge, and betting that Anthropic's revenue growth is the single variable holding the AI bull case together. The Trump Accounts launch is the other major news — $625M in committed philanthropic capital, a #3 App Store ranking on day one, and a July 4 funding date.