Anthropic plans dual listing in New York and Tokyo amid investment boom

Filing documents recently released by Anthropic reveal that the artificial intelligence (AI) firm will offer shares worth up to 552.9 billion Japanese yen (approximately 114.4 billion New Taiwan dollars) in Japan concurrently with its initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. This move underscores the company’s heavy reliance on international capital markets and highlights the enthusiasm of Japanese investors for the AI sector. According to the filings, Anthropic will list on the New York Stock Exchange and conduct a secondary offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with both listings taking place simultaneously to broaden the company’s access to funding.

Founded in 2020 by former senior executives of OpenAI, Anthropic is dedicated to developing safe and interpretable machine learning models. The company has secured early investments from tech giants such as Google and Microsoft and completed a venture capital round worth several billion dollars in 2023. Unlike OpenAI, Anthropic emphasizes a “safety-first” approach to research and development, having launched the Claude series of large language models, which are utilized by multiple enterprises for customer service, content generation, and other applications. As global demand for AI technology surges, Anthropic is striving to strike a balance between technological innovation and commercialization to secure a foothold in the fiercely competitive market.

The U.S. market has traditionally been the preferred destination for AI companies seeking their IPOs, owing to its mature capital markets, extensive investor base, and high tolerance for technological innovation. By choosing to list on the New York Stock Exchange, Anthropic will face rigorous scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but it will also gain greater market visibility. Compared to OpenAI, which completed its IPO in 2023 at a valuation of approximately 100 billion U.S. dollars, Anthropic’s valuation will hinge on the commercialization of its models and its potential for future revenue growth. If the listing is successful, the company will become one of the few global AI firms to be listed simultaneously in both the United States and Japan.

As a key technology investment market in Asia, Japan has increasingly focused on the AI sector in recent years. In 2022, the Japanese government launched the “AI Innovation Promotion Plan” to encourage collaboration between domestic and foreign enterprises, offering tax incentives and financial subsidies. Anthropic’s concurrent share offering in Japan capitalizes on the investment enthusiasm of Japanese investors in high-tech industries while introducing AI products with a more international perspective to the local market. This move is expected to increase the weight of the technology sector in the Japanese stock market and may foster cooperation between local enterprises and Anthropic in terms of technology, talent, and market access.

From an investor’s perspective, Anthropic’s dual-listing strategy is expected to mitigate risks associated with volatility in a single market and expand its investor base. For the AI industry, Anthropic’s listing will likely accelerate the flow of capital into machine learning, driving the rapid implementation of technological research and applications. Moreover, the simultaneous nature of the listings in both countries will provide cross-border investors with more convenient trading opportunities, promoting the internationalization of capital markets. In the long term, Anthropic’s listing could serve as a starting point for a new high in AI investment in Japan and may inspire more multinational technology companies to seek capital and partners in the Japanese market.

(Source: Central News Agency)