Anthropic just became the latest artificial intelligence (AI) giant to announce an upcoming initial public offering. The AI lab joins Cerebras Systems, which launched last month, and SpaceX, which is aiming for a June 12 market debut. Anthropic hasn't yet decided on a potential date or other specifics; instead, it started the process by filing confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1.
In recent years, Anthropic has gained the attention of investors as it competes with OpenAI -- these players are the developers of popular AI assistants, Claude and ChatGPT, respectively. Both of these AI labs have expressed interest in launching IPOs in recent times after raising billions of dollars in funding.
And speaking of funding, Anthropic's valuation just hit $965 billion ahead of its market debut. This clearly is good news for the company -- but it's not the only winner. These two magnificent AI stocks may be the real winners.
Image source: Getty Images.
Anthropic's clues about growth
So first, a quick note about Anthropic. As mentioned, it's the company behind Claude, coding assistant Claude Code, and other products. We have limited information about Anthropic's earnings since it isn't yet publicly traded, so it doesn't have to issue reports. But in recent times, the company has offered us some clues about its growth.
Last month, Anthropic said it's seen ongoing growth in global enterprise adoption of Claude since its Series G funding round in February -- and its annual revenue run rate just hit $47 billion. In February, the run rate was $14 billion, and the company, at that time, said that three years prior, it hadn't yet earned $1 in revenue. Meanwhile, due to this growth in customers, Anthropic must invest in compute to support Claude and its development -- it's significantly increased capacity in recent weeks.
All of this shows tremendous growth in a relatively short period of time, and it's not surprising that professional investors have rushed to get in on the story in the private market. Now, let's consider the two tech companies that may be significantly benefiting from Anthropic's soaring valuation -- and they are Amazon (AMZN 2.93%) and Alphabet (GOOG 0.95%) (GOOGL 0.82%).
For a few reasons. First, these companies are both investors in Anthropic, so they benefit as the company's value rises. Amazon in April said it was investing $5 billion in Anthropic right away, after having already invested $8 billion in the past. And the e-commerce and cloud computing services giant said it would invest as much as $20 billion in the future, depending on the achievement of commercial milestones.
NASDAQ: AMZN
Key Data Points
A $40 billion investment
Alphabet recently said it plans to invest as much as $40 billion in Anthropic. Prior to this, Alphabet had invested about $3 billion and reportedly held a 14% stake in the company. That stake could be worth more than $100 billion today.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is turning to Amazon and Alphabet for computing capacity -- for example, Anthropic recently committed to spending $100 billion on Amazon Web Services technologies over the coming 10 years.
And both of these cloud service giants also offer access to Claude to their customers. So Amazon and Alphabet may benefit as Anthropic grows and invests more and more in compute -- and as customers flock to Claude.
What does this mean for you as an investor? To gain exposure to Anthropic, you might participate in the upcoming IPO or buy the stock once it starts trading. But that isn't the only way to benefit from this exciting AI lab.
You also might buy shares of Amazon and Alphabet, as they are likely to gain from Anthropic's progress in many ways, as I've mentioned above. This might be a particularly wise move for investors who seek a bit of security, considering Amazon and Alphabet both have a long history of earnings growth and very well-established businesses. At the same time, their participation in the Anthropic story could offer you exposure to a new wave of growth.
