As Anthropic files for its blockbuster IPO, a look at the biggest players tapping public markets

Some of the leading artificial intelligence companies are moving toward initial public offerings at eye-popping valuations. Anthropic and OpenAI are looking to go public to access more capital in the race to shape the technology’s future.

The enormous sums involved in building and maintaining AI models, the pursuit of artificial general intelligence, which can surpass humans at many tasks, and widespread AI adoption all have led to an air of excitement around the technology that has helped propel stock market gains.

“These companies are now burning through cash to win the AI race, and public equity is the cheapest source available, particularly 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 are looming in the background along with concerns about keeping the technology under human control. Some experts fear tech companies and venture capitalists are pouring too much money into a still-nascent technology.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest AI-focused companies.

Anthropic

Anthropic, which filed paperwork Monday for an initial stock offering on Wall Street, was formed in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders. The maker of the Claude chatbot was recently valued at US$965-billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable startups. It has been a meteoric rise for what was once a little-known research laboratory in San Francisco. Its value is reportedly expected to rise to US$1.5-trillion or possibly US$2-trillion.

In its regulatory filing, Anthropic said it will list its stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “ANT.”

Anthropic IPO stands alone as AI market jitters sideline others

OpenAI

The maker of ChatGPT began in 2015 as a non-profit dedicated to developing AI for the common good. It is now a company valued at US$852-billion planning an IPO next year.

While OpenAI may have helped set off the current AI boom, Anthropic’s meteoric rise and Claude’s growing popularity have left the ChatGPT maker playing catch-up.

In an unsuccessful lawsuit against OpenAI and its top executives, Elon Musk, an OpenAI co-founder, claimed the company had strayed from its founding mission in pursuit of greater profits. OpenAI had countered that Musk was simply seeking a bigger slice of the company. OpenAI has not yet reported that it has filed initial IPO paperwork with the SEC.

Questrade is offering some Canadian investors a way to buy stakes in OpenAI before its IPO

SpaceX

Elon Musk’s SpaceX SPCX-Q was valued at US$800-billion last year, but its value grew to US$1.25-trillion after the space exploration company merged in February with Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI. The company went public in June with an offering that raised US$86-billion, breaking the record for the largest IPO, which had been set by Saudi Aramco in 2019 when the oil giant went public and raised US$26-billion.

Musk arranged for SpaceX to buy xAI earlier this year despite protests from some SpaceX investors, who argued that the deal amounted to a bailout and raised ethical concerns because Musk was a controlling shareholder in both companies. Revenue has soared to $14.6 billion, the company reported earlier this month.

Several AI heavyweights are already public companies

Google developed the Gemini AI assistant in response to a competitive threat posed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which came out in late 2022. Gemini AI models are integrated into Google search and other products such as Maps. The market value of Alphabet GOOGL-Q, Google’s Mountain View, California-based parent company, was US$4.54-trillion at the beginning of June, up from US$2.3-trillion a year earlier. That growth suggests that Alphabet’s spending spree on AI is producing dividends so far, despite investor worries about some of its peers’ massive AI investments.

Meta’s META-Q AI push has included the rollout of its AI agent Muse, which can help with daily tasks. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week on a call with analysts that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up accounts for Muse, which the company launched in August. He noted that Muse requires significant computing power to run, but said the company expects to improve its cost efficiency by more than 10 times in the next year, “which will enable it to be profitable once the revenue lines are at scale.”

Microsoft MSFT-Q, which went public 40 years ago, likely would have been running behind in the AI race were it not for a timely multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI. Microsoft provided the computing power and financial backing that helped OpenAI build ChatGPT. In turn, Microsoft was able to use the same technical foundation to power its own AI assistant, now called Copilot. The once-exclusive partnership has since evolved as both companies have turned to other partners to advance their AI ambitions.