When Anthropic goes public as soon as next month, its initial offering will be more than just a coming-out party for the artificial intelligence company. It will also be a litmus test for the economy, with trillions of dollars at stake.
Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot, is a tent pole of the A.I. industry. Valued in the private markets at nearly $1 trillion and backed by more than $130 billion in funding, it could raise $100 billion in its offering and promptly become one of the world’s biggest public companies. But the stakes are even higher than that.
Anthropic and Open AI, its chief rival, sit atop a pyramid of business partners and suppliers — infrastructure providers, chipmakers, energy companies and A.I. start-ups — that have all spent heavily over the last four years because they believe demand for A.I. products will keep growing. Anthropic’s listing will provide the first in-depth look at the health of a key business underlying the A.I. boom — and will be a test of its durability.
“For the market, it’s a bellwether,” said Umesh Padval, an investor at Seligman Ventures. If Anthropic disappoints in its public debut, that could hurt investor confidence and cascade into a wider market sell-off, casting doubts on how much longer the A.I. boom can go. A successful offering could lift the market and pave the way for more A.I. companies to go public.
Source: New York Times Business · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing