Why Anthropic has the edge over OpenAI in IPO race
The rivalry between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei is entering a new phase. Both AI bosses are planning public listings and hope to use the
The rivalry between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei is entering a new phase. Both AI bosses are planning public listings and hope to use the money to outpace each other in the race to build superintelligent AI. It has all the ingredients of a Hollywood script: two ambitious tech nerds locked in a high-stakes battle for dominance in artificial intelligence (AI), complete with surprising plot twists. Take Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, who recently called on the AI industry to pause development, warning that humanity could lose control of the technology. What made the statement remarkable was its timing: just days earlier, his company had filed paperwork with the US securities regulator, the SEC, to launch an IPO — a first public sale of company shares on the stock market. Anthropic's move caught rival OpenAI off guard. ChatGPT's owner only announced its own plans to go public a week later. The timing looks well-chosen. Stock markets are buoyant, and AI is everywhere. Anthropic is currently valued at $965 billion (€836 billion); OpenAI at $852 billion (€738 billion). A successful IPO could push both into the exclusive club of trillion-dollar companies, a league currently occupied by only a handful of firms, including Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla. For context: Siemens, Germany's largest publicly listed company, is valued at around $230 billion. Where does all the money go? Research firm Gartner estimates that global AI spending will exceed $2.5 trillion this year alone, with the biggest share going toward infrastructure, chiefly the construction and leasing of large data centers that provide the raw computing power AI systems require.
Until now, both companies have funded themselves through private investment rounds, attracting capital from corporations and venture funds that bet on their future success. According to Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at PitchBook, a US-based provider of data and research, OpenAI has raised $186 billion since its founding; Anthropic has raised $127 billion. Anthropic or OpenAI: Who has the better prospects? Most financial analysts give Anthropic the edge on the stock market. "Anthropic is the better IPO story right now, and the numbers make the case," Rolfes told DW. Anthropic is forecast to generate $47 billion in revenue this year, well ahead of OpenAI's projected $30 billion, something it will achieve with less overall capital raised. Anthropic also has a stronger foothold in the corporate market. "Over 1,000 enterprise customers are each spending more than $1 million annually" on Anthropic, Rolfes noted. Does AI pose a security threat? To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video OpenAI, by contrast, dominates the consumer market through ChatGPT, which boasts over 900 million weekly users. The problem: most of them use it for free. "Monetizing a free user base at scale is a fundamentally different and more difficult problem," said Rolfes. Pedro Domingos, emeritus professor of computer science at the University of Washington, largely agrees. "They're in the lead with business customers, where the most money is likely to come from. But things are still very fluid." Anthropic has a stronger demand, he said, but less computing capacity.
The BriefWire