Anthropic advances IPO plans as competitors pause public listings

Many major US technology companies were expected to sell shares to the public before the end of the year. Now, almost all of them have delayed their plans. Only one major company is still moving forward: artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic.

Anthropic is continuing with plans for its initial public offering (IPO), which is when a company sells its shares to the public for the first time. The company is currently aiming to start trading on the stock market in mid-November, after releasing a public document with details about its business and finances. Anthropic is expected to begin formal meetings with possible investors during the week of 9 November. This is a little later than its original plan for mid-October, ahead of the US midterm elections.

Anthropic's stock market debut will be an important test of how large investment companies feel about businesses developing the most advanced AI systems. Industry experts believe Anthropic's strong position in the market for AI that can create text and other content could give the company a value of up to $1.5 trillion (about R26.3 trillion).

Anthropic's decision to continue is very different from what is happening across the wider technology industry. Interest rates around the world have started rising again, and financial markets have become less stable. This has caused investors to sell large amounts of shares and debt investments connected to AI companies such as CoreWeave, pushing their prices down sharply. Large investors are also questioning whether companies can afford to keep spending huge amounts of money on AI infrastructure over time.

Several important companies in the industry have delayed or cancelled their plans to sell shares to the public:

• Nscale and Switch: Data center operator Switch and infrastructure builder Nscale have delayed their stock market listing plans. They want more time to study market conditions and deal with feedback from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government agency that oversees financial markets.
• SB Energy, AirTrunk REIT, and Firmus: SB Energy, which is backed by SoftBank, AirTrunk REIT, which is backed by Blackstone, and Firmus, which is backed by Nvidia, have either put their plans to raise money through financial markets on hold or cancelled them completely.
• Oura: The company that makes smart rings recently entered the stock market, but it attracted less interest than expected from large investment companies that usually buy shares and hold them for a long time. This has made investors less interested in other companies' share offerings.

Investors are still closely examining the enormous amount of money needed to build data centers. They are also worried about competition from open-source AI systems, which make their underlying technology available for others to use or develop. Even with these concerns, large investment companies continue to see Anthropic as an important company to invest in if they want to benefit from the long-term growth of artificial intelligence. Reports suggest that other companies planning to sell shares have moved their plans aside so they do not have to compete with Anthropic for money from large investors during its November investor meetings.