Anthropic market debut could break SpaceX IPO record

Anthropic market debut could break SpaceX IPO record

The market debut of artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Anthropic PBC, a chief rival to OpenAI, could break the record set by Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX), US media have reported.

Businessman Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public in June at a value of US$1.77 trillion and raised US$85.7 billion in its blockbuster initial public offering (IPO), the largest in history.

Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI models, “expects to match or beat the size” of SpaceX’s deal, Bloomberg reported.

Anthropic’s logo is pictured in an illustration taken on Aug. 16.

The company’s bankers have told potential investors it could seek to raise “more than US$100 billion” in its IPO, which could put the company’s value at US$2 trillion, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing two unnamed sources with knowledge of the talks.

That would more than double the five-year-old company’s previous valuation at US$965 billion, reached in its last funding round in June.

Only a handful of companies including Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and chip maker Nvidia Corp have surpassed the US$2 trillion mark.

Anthropic declined AFP’s request for comment.

After filing to go public in June, the company could reveal its public offering prospectus in the coming weeks, the New York Times reported, with shares possibly listed in autumn.

Anthropic could then beat OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, to market. That company is hoping to list its shares next year.

Founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei and other former executives at OpenAI, Anthropic has positioned itself as a safety-focused alternative in the AI race.

Claude Code, its coding assistant for developers, has become one of its most popular products, helping push its projected annual revenue to US$47 billion.

Anthropic’s commercial success has been accompanied by difficulties in meeting demand for computing power, amid a shortage of chips and servers.

The company has hired Amir Salek, a founder of the custom chip program at Alphabet Inc’s Google, as the start-up lays the groundwork for a push into making its own semiconductors.

Salek is joining the compute team of Anthropic, the company said.

The executive ran Google’s tensor processing unit business until 2022 and delivered the first seven generations of those chips.

After leaving Google, Salek has been senior managing director at Cerberus Capital Management LP. He also previously worked at Nvidia.

Anthropic, which buys chips from a variety of sources, has indicated that it wants to build an in-house silicon business.

Like other AI giants, Anthropic is scrambling to get enough data center infrastructure to support its ambitions. Custom chips would potentially help it cope with supply shortages and tailor designs to better meet its needs.