Some leading artificial intelligence companies are moving toward initial public offerings this year at eye-popping valuations. From Anthropic to SpaceX to OpenAI, tech giants are looking to take their shares public to access more capital in the race to shape the future of technology.
The amount of money invested in developing and maintaining artificial intelligence models, artificial general intelligence surpassing humans in many tasks, and widespread AI adoption helped the stock market to record highs.
“These companies are burning through cash right now to win the AI race, and public equity is a very cheap resource, especially in a rising interest rate environment,” said Michael Field, chief equity analyst at Morningstar.
But amid the billions — even trillions — at stake, worries about an AI bubble fade into the background. Some experts fear that tech companies and venture capitalists are still pouring too much money into new and unproven technology.
However, for now, the market shows no signs of slowing down. Here’s a look at some of the biggest companies focusing on AI.
SpaceX
Elon Musk’s SpaceX was valued at $800 billion (NZ$1.3 billion) last year, but its value rose to $1.25 trillion (NZ$2.1 trillion) after the space exploration company merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI in February. Now, SpaceX is planning an IPO that could turn out to be one of the biggest stock sales ever — even though the company is currently losing billions of dollars a year. SpaceX lost $2.6 billion (NZ$4.4 billion) on revenue of $18.7 billion (NZ$31.8 billion) last year, according to a May regulatory filing, and losses continued to pile up earlier this year. xAI, which owns the Croc chatbot, lost $6.4 billion (NZ$10.9 billion) on operations last year, according to a company filing.
Musk bought SpaceX to buy xAI earlier this year, despite protests from some SpaceX investors, saying it was unethical because of the bailout and because he was a shareholder in both.
SpaceX said on Wednesday it plans to raise $75 billion (NZ$127.7 billion) when it goes public this month, setting the stage for a massive stock market debut and putting Musk on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. An offering of that size would easily break the record for largest IPO set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, when the oil giant went public and raised $26 billion (NZ$44.2 billion).
Anthropology
Anthropic, maker of the Cloud chatbot, was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders. It was recently valued at $965 billion (NZ$1.6 trillion), making it one of the world’s most valuable startups. It’s a meteoric rise for what was once a little-known research lab. The San Francisco-based company is moving toward going public on Wall Street, announcing on June 1 that it has filed a confidential filing for a proposed IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Anthropic says it generates $47 billion (NZ$80 billion) in annual revenue from selling its technology to individuals and companies.
OpenAI
The maker of SatGBT started in 2015 as a non-profit organization dedicated to building AI for the public good. It’s now a $852 billion (NZ$1.4 billion) company, with an IPO planned as soon as this fall.
While OpenAI may have helped kick off the current AI boom, Anthropic’s meteoric rise and Claude’s growing popularity have made the ChatGPT producer catch-up.
In a failed lawsuit against OpenAI and its top executives, OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk claimed the company was distracted from its founding mission to make more money. OpenAI countered that Musk was simply looking for a bigger piece of the company. OpenAI has yet to file initial IPO documents with the SEC.
Many AI heavyweights are already public companies
Google designed the Gemini AI assistant in response to the competitive threat posed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which was launched in late 2022. Gemini AI models are integrated into other products such as Google Search and Maps. Alphabet, the Mountain View, California-based parent company of Google, had a market value of $4.54 trillion (NZ$7.7 trillion) at the start of June. That growth is a sign that Alphabet’s spending on AI is paying dividends so far, even as investors worry about its peers’ massive AI investments.
Meta’s AI push integrates its assistant Llama into all aspects of its business, including advertising and consumer-facing tools such as digital assistants that can help with daily tasks, as well as image and video creation. Unlike many competing models, Llama is open source, meaning it is mostly available to the public and developers. Meta AI is available as a standalone app and is integrated into the Menlo Park, California-based company’s smart glasses. Meta’s market capitalization stood at $1.55 trillion (NZ$2.6 trillion) at the start of June, down from $1.76 trillion (NZ$2.9 trillion) a year ago.
Microsoft, which went public 40 years ago, would have been left behind in the AI race if it hadn’t made a timely multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI. Microsoft provided the computing power and financial support that enabled OpenAI to develop ChatGPT. In turn, Microsoft was able to use the same technological foundation to power its own AI assistant, now called Copilot. The once-exclusive partnership has evolved as both companies look to other partners to advance their AI ambitions.
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