What Anthropic's IPO could mean for Amazon and Google - Yahoo Finance
By Google News AI ·
Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) is preparing for what could be a historic initial public offering (IPO) later this month, with Wall Street expecting the company to launch with a valuation of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion.
A public debut at the top end would put Anthropic ahead of SpaceX (SPCX) for the most valuable stock market IPO in history.
That would make plenty of people a whole lot richer on paper virtually overnight, including big-name investors like Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), two of the company's largest backers.
The tech giants have invested billions of dollars in Anthropic, and, according to the AI lab's amended S-1 investor prospectus, the pair will hold more than 5% of Anthropic's outstanding stock when it goes public.
But those hefty investments also carry substantial risks if the company falls short of Wall Street's enormous expectations.
"There's risk to their investment in that … who knows in five years whether Anthropic will be the most profitable company in the world — or worth nothing," Dorothy Lund, co-director of Columbia Law School's Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership, told Yahoo Finance.
According to Amazon's latest quarterly filing, the company has invested $18 billion in Anthropic so far, and currently has a financing agreement with the startup worth up to an additional $15 billion.
As of Sept. 30, those investments were worth $92.5 billion in Anthropic nonvoting preferred stock. Amazon also said it holds $146.2 billion in notes, which would convert to stock when Anthropic goes public.
Google doesn't break out the exact value of individual investments, but in April it revealed plans to invest upwards of $40 billion in the company if it meets certain performance obligations. That's in addition to…
Originally published by Google News AI
