For the better part of two years, Wall Street has been salivating over the prospect of OpenAI and Anthropic going public. But with AI stocks coming under pressure, concerns mounting about circular financing, and investors increasingly questioning the hundreds of billions being spent on artificial intelligence infrastructure, I have to wonder whether enthusiasm for these two potentially historic IPOs is beginning to fade at precisely the wrong time.
Recent reports have suggested that expectations for Anthropic’s eventual valuation may be coming down from previously discussed levels approaching $2 trillion. And if public investors prove unwilling to pay the extraordinary valuations private investors have assigned to these companies, the consequences could extend beyond OpenAI and Anthropic themselves.
That’s because some of the largest publicly traded companies in the world already have sizeable financial exposure to both businesses. I wanted to just list some of those names so my readers would know where collateral damage could show up, should OpenAI or Anthropic run into problems going public.
Here’s a quick look at who could be affected and how much is potentially at stake, including one or two names where OpenAI and Anthropic could have an outsized effect compared to other names.
