Anthropic filed for an initial public offering this week, setting up what will likely be the second major AI IPO of the year. The filing runs nearly 70,000 words and catalogs an extensive list of risks. Among them: enormous spending commitments on computing power, uncertainty about how long customers will keep paying for AI given questionable returns, and the catastrophic or existential risks to humanity that the company flags as unusual but real.
One risk the filing does not mention, according to Jason Bloomberg, is that AI today lacks the economies of scale that made software so lucrative. Even so, the offering is widely expected to succeed if it happens before Thanksgiving. The listing would create a new cohort of wealthy employees, following the 70% of Nvidia employees who are already millionaires.
SpaceXAI, the other AI IPO earlier this year, has a stake in Anthropic's success because it supplies a large chunk of Anthropic's compute. Google and Microsoft, both AI partners and rivals, share that interest. Anthropic is not alone in raising money for infrastructure: Meta said this week it will issue $95 billion in nonvoting stock to build more.
Few observers, Nvidia least of all, expect an AI and data center backlash to slow that investment. Not everyone will come out ahead, though. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said this week that many AI neoclouds will fail, a view Gartner shares.
Investor nerves extended to the major cloud providers. Alphabet stock fell more than 12% Thursday, erasing more than $500 billion in market value, after a slow quarter for search and ads that may reflect AI chatbots drawing away attention. Microsoft fared better on the strength of its application layer, while Amazon shares fell despite strong cloud revenue growth on concerns about infrastructure spending.
Broader market skittishness showed up elsewhere. Intel stock plunged more than 30% after its Thursday earnings report on concerns about a slowing PC business, and Fortinet fell more than 20% after issuing a slightly lower outlook. Earnings from Apple, AMD, Supermicro, Qualcomm, Arm and Palantir are due next week.
Separately, The New York Times reported that a woman described as an apparent Chinese spy had for some time been in contact with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who reportedly did not know she was more than a customer executive. The report outlines U.S. government concerns, though the account appears to leave gaps. An election is also scheduled for next week.
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