On Monday, Google parent company Alphabet announced that it plans to sell $80 billion (€69 billion) in stock to fund a major expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
The announcement comes as Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, said it had filed confidentially for an initial public offering. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is also widely expected to pursue a public listing.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk said SpaceX, which merged with his xAI company in February, is planning one of the biggest stock sales ever and could begin pitching the offering to investors as soon as this week.
Fundraising drive to power its artificial intelligence expansion
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said its fundraising will include public stock offerings, a long-term stock sale program, and a $10 billion private investment from Berkshire Hathaway.
“The company is experiencing strong demand for its AI solutions and services from enterprises and consumers, at levels that are exceeding the company’s available supply,” it said in a statement.
The tech giant said this has forced a rapid build-out of data centers and computing infrastructure.
How AI search is changing what we find online
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Anthropic moving toward going public on Wall Street
Meanwhile, Anthropic’s confidential filing for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission allows regulators to review the documents while its financials and business details are not public until much later in the process.
“The number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set,” the company added.
The announcement comes only days after the Claude maker said it had raised $65 billion in funding, valuing the company at $965 billion, ahead of chief rival OpenAI, which is also expected to go public later this year.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to launch its IPO roadshow this week, targeting a valuation of around $1.75 trillion.
AI bubble incoming?
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Anthropic’s moves signal “an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years, with these three major conglomerates set to go public later this year,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told the Associated Press.
“Whenever there is speculation, there’s also usually substance and fundamentals,” Corrigan said. “The question here is whether the price investors are going to end up paying is going to match up to the substance and fundamentals of what AI is really going to do in the real economy and as a business.”
Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
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