AI companies head toward giant Wall Street debuts: a look at the biggest players

Some of the leading artificial intelligence companies are moving toward initial public offerings at eye-catching valuations . Anthropic and OpenAI are seeking to go public to raise more capital to shape the future of the technology .

The vast sums spent on building and maintaining AI models , the pursuit of artificial general intelligence that could outperform humans in many tasks , and the widespread adoption of AI have created excitement around the technology in the stock market and helped boost gains .

“ These companies are spending money right now to win the AI race , and public stock is the cheapest source , especially in a rising interest rate environment ,” said Michael Field , chief equity analyst at Morningstar .

But with billions , even trillions , of dollars at stake , concerns about an AI bubble are also in the picture , alongside worries about keeping the technology under human control . Some experts fear that tech companies and venture capitalists are pouring too much money into a still-emerging technology .

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest companies in AI.

Anthropic

Anthropic , which on Monday filed paperwork for an initial public offering on Wall Street, was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders . The creator of the Claude chatbot was recently valued at $965 billion , making it one of the world’s most valuable startups . For a company that was once a little-known research lab in San Francisco, this has been an incredible rise . Its value is reportedly expected to grow to $1.5 trillion , or perhaps even $2 trillion .

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

OpenAI

The creator of ChatGPT began in 2015 as a nonprofit organization developing AI for the common good . The company is now valued at $852 billion . It had also planned to take its shares public this year , but CEO Sam Altman has said the timeline will be extended due to concerns about AI safety .

While OpenAI may have helped kick off the current AI boom , Anthropic’s meteoric rise and Claude’s growing popularity have left the ChatGPT maker behind .

In an unsuccessful lawsuit against OpenAI and its senior executives , OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk claimed the company had strayed from its founding mission in order to make more profit . OpenAI argued that Musk simply wanted to gain a larger share of the company . OpenAI has not yet said whether it has submitted preliminary IPO documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

SpaceX

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

Despite objections from some SpaceX investors , Musk arranged for SpaceX to acquire xAI earlier this year . Because Musk is a controlling shareholder in both companies , he claimed the deal was a financial lifeline , which raised ethical concerns . The company said earlier this month that revenue had reached $14.6 billion .

Several AI owners are already public companies

Google developed its Gemini AI assistant in response to the competitive threat posed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT , which emerged in late 2022. Gemini AI models are integrated into Google Search and other products such as Maps . Alphabet , the parent company based in Mountain View , California, had a market value of $4.54 trillion in early June , up from $2.3 trillion a year earlier . This growth shows that Alphabet’s AI spending has paid off so far, despite investor concerns about some peers ’ massive AI investments .

Meta’s AI advances include the launch of Muse , an AI agent that can help with everyday tasks . Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts last week that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have opened 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 cost efficiency more than tenfold next year and that this will “ allow it to be profitable once the revenue lines scale .”

Microsoft, which went public 40 years ago , could have fallen behind in the AI race had it not invested billions of dollars in OpenAI in good time. Microsoft provided OpenAI with the computing power and financial backing that helped build ChatGPT . In turn , Microsoft was able to power its own AI assistant , now called Copilot, using the same technical foundation . The once-exclusive partnership has evolved over time as both companies have turned to other partners for their AI ambitions .

Some of the leading artificial intelligence companies are moving toward initial public offerings at eye-catching valuations . Anthropic and OpenAI are seeking to go public to raise more capital to shape the future of the technology .

The vast sums spent on building and maintaining AI models , the pursuit of artificial general intelligence that could outperform humans in many tasks , and the widespread adoption of AI have created excitement around the technology in the stock market and helped boost gains .

“ These companies are spending money right now to win the AI race , and public stock is the cheapest source , especially in a rising interest rate environment ,” said Michael Field , chief equity analyst at Morningstar .

But with billions , even trillions , of dollars at stake , concerns about an AI bubble are also in the picture , alongside worries about keeping the technology under human control . Some experts fear that tech companies and venture capitalists are pouring too much money into a still-emerging technology .

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest companies in AI.

Anthropic

Anthropic , which on Monday filed paperwork for an initial public offering on Wall Street, was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders . The creator of the Claude chatbot was recently valued at $965 billion , making it one of the world’s most valuable startups . For a company that was once a little-known research lab in San Francisco, this has been an incredible rise . Its value is reportedly expected to grow to $1.5 trillion , or perhaps even $2 trillion .

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

OpenAI

The creator of ChatGPT began in 2015 as a nonprofit organization developing AI for the common good . The company is now valued at $852 billion . It had also planned to take its shares public this year , but CEO Sam Altman has said the timeline will be extended due to concerns about AI safety .

While OpenAI may have helped kick off the current AI boom , Anthropic’s meteoric rise and Claude’s growing popularity have left the ChatGPT maker behind .

In an unsuccessful lawsuit against OpenAI and its senior executives , OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk claimed the company had strayed from its founding mission in order to make more profit . OpenAI argued that Musk simply wanted to gain a larger share of the company . OpenAI has not yet said whether it has submitted preliminary IPO documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

SpaceX

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

Despite objections from some SpaceX investors , Musk arranged for SpaceX to acquire xAI earlier this year . Because Musk is a controlling shareholder in both companies , he claimed the deal was a financial lifeline , which raised ethical concerns . The company said earlier this month that revenue had reached $14.6 billion .

Several AI owners are already public companies

Google developed its Gemini AI assistant in response to the competitive threat posed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT , which emerged in late 2022. Gemini AI models are integrated into Google Search and other products such as Maps . Alphabet , the parent company based in Mountain View , California, had a market value of $4.54 trillion in early June , up from $2.3 trillion a year earlier . This growth shows that Alphabet’s AI spending has paid off so far, despite investor concerns about some peers ’ massive AI investments .

Meta’s AI advances include the launch of Muse , an AI agent that can help with everyday tasks . Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts last week that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have opened 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 cost efficiency more than tenfold next year and that this will “ allow it to be profitable once the revenue lines scale .”

Microsoft, which went public 40 years ago , could have fallen behind in the AI race had it not invested billions of dollars in OpenAI in good time. Microsoft provided OpenAI with the computing power and financial backing that helped build ChatGPT . In turn , Microsoft was able to power its own AI assistant , now called Copilot, using the same technical foundation . The once-exclusive partnership has evolved over time as both companies have turned to other partners for their AI ambitions .