Anthropic上市的意義何在？幾乎關乎一切（1/2）

Recently The New York Times reported the following:

What’s Riding on Anthropic’s Market Debut? Nearly Everything. (1/2)

Anthropic sits atop a pyramid of business partners and suppliers, making it a barometer of the broader economy. Its initial public offering will have widespread implications.

By Erin Griffith and Lauren Hirsch - Erin Griffith reported from San Francisco and Lauren Hirsch from New York.

Oct. 26, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

When Anthropic goes public as soon as next month, its initial offering will be more than just a coming-out party for the artificial intelligence company. It will also be a litmus test for the economy, with trillions of dollars at stake.

Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot, is a tent pole of the A.I. industry. Valued in the private markets at nearly $1 trillion and backed by more than $130 billion in funding, it could raise $100 billion in its offering and promptly become one of the world’s biggest public companies. But the stakes are even higher than that.

Anthropic and OpenAI, its chief rival, sit atop a pyramid of business partners and suppliers — infrastructure providers, chipmakers, energy companies and A.I. start-ups — that have all spent heavily over the last four years because they believe demand for A.I. products will keep growing.

Anthropic’s listing will provide the first in-depth look at the health of a key business underlying the A.I. boom — and will be a test of its durability. Is there unending appetite for A.I. services to justify the spending on chips, data centers and other infrastructure? Or will Anthropic’s performance show that there are limits?

“For the market, it’s a bellwether,” said Umesh Padval, an investor at Seligman Ventures, who has worked in tech for nearly 40 years.

If Anthropic disappoints in its public debut, that could hurt investor confidence and cascade into a wider market sell-off, casting doubts on how much longer the A.I. boom can go. A successful offering could lift the market and pave the way for more A.I. companies to go public.

Stock markets are already on edge, with technology stocks broadly falling this month, led by a sell-off in the companies that design and produce the computer chips that power A.I. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is in a bear market, defined as a decline of 20 percent or more from a recent high and a sign of significant investor angst, after falling 26 percent from its June peak.

Over the last couple of weeks, Microsoft canceled a deal with Nscale, a provider of data centers. A report from the research firm Gartner predicted that 80 percent of “neoclouds,” the companies that provide data and computing power for A.I. firms, could be forced out of business. And Ken Griffin, the billionaire owner of the hedge fund Citadel, said A.I. investors were “almost certainly” in a bubble.

Those negative signals have added to fears about the huge piles of money being spent on A.I. infrastructure. Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft have said they plan to spend at least $740 billion on A.I. infrastructure, including data centers, this year. Private market investors have poured $1.1 trillion into Anthropic, OpenAI and other A.I. companies since 2022, according to PitchBook, which tracks investments.

As spending and investment have risen in private markets, public investments have grown, too, increasing the stock market’s reliance on the performance of the A.I. industry. The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 are worth more than $1 trillion together, with eight of them being tech companies. Combined, the top 10 account for over 40 percent of the index, up from less than 20 percent a decade ago.

When Anthropic is added to the index, it is likely to displace either Berkshire Hathaway or Eli Lilly, the only non-tech companies with valuations above $1 trillion, from the top 10.

“There is a lot riding on this one,” said Brad Gastwirth, the global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology, a supply chain services firm. “If it goes bad, it’s going to bring down the market.”

(to be continued)

Translation

Anthropic上市的意義何在？幾乎關乎一切（1/2）

Anthropic 位於由商業夥伴和供應商組成的金字塔頂端，使其成為整體經濟的晴雨表。其首次公開發行（IPO）將產生深遠的影響

Anthropic最快將於下個月上市，其IPO不僅是這家人工智能公司的亮相，更是對經濟的嚴峻考驗，涉及數萬億美元的資金。

Anthropic 是人工智能產業的支柱企業，其開發的聊天機器人 Claude 廣受好評。 Anthropic 在私募市場的估值接近1兆美元，並已獲得超過1,300億美元的融資，如果上市，該公司預計將籌集1,000億美元，迅速成為全球最大的上市公司之一。但其風險遠不止於此。

Anthropic 及其主要競爭對手 OpenAI 都是位於一個龐大的商業夥伴和供應商金字塔的頂端 - 這些合作夥伴和供應商包括基礎設施提供商、晶片製造商、能源公司和人工智能新創公司 - 過去四年裡，他們都投入巨資，因為他們相信對人工智能產品的需求將持續增長。

Anthropic 的上市將首次深入展現支撐人工智能繁榮的關鍵業務的健康狀況，並考驗其持久性。市場對人工智能服務的需求是否永無止境，足以支撐在晶片、数據中心和其他基礎設施上的巨額投入？或者，Anthropic 的表現是否會顯示這種模式有其限制？

在科技業工作近40年的 Seligman Ventures 投資者 Umesh Padval 表示:「對市場而言，這是一個風向標」。

如果 Anthropic 的首次公開發行令人失望，可能會打擊投資者信心，並引發更廣泛的市場拋售，使人們對人工智能熱潮還能持續多久產生懷疑。如果 Anthropic 成功上市，則可能提振市場，並為更多人工智能公司上市鋪路。

股市已經處於緊張狀態，本月科技股普遍下跌，其中以設計和生產人工智能晶片的公司股價下跌最為嚴重。費城半導體指數已進入熊市，熊市的定義是較近期高點下跌20%或更多，這是投資者極度焦慮的標誌，該指數此前已從6月份的高點下跌了26%。

在過去幾週，微軟取消了與數據中心提供商Nscale的交易。研究公司 Gartner 的一份報告預測，為人工智能公司提供數據和運算能力的「新雲端」企業中，80% 可能被迫倒閉。對沖基金 Citadel 的億萬富翁老闆 Ken Griffin 表示，人工智能投資者「幾乎肯定」正處於泡沫之中。

這些負面訊號加劇了人們對人工智能基礎設施巨額投資的擔憂。亞馬遜、Meta、谷歌和微軟均表示，今年計劃在人工智能基礎設施（包括數據中心）上投入至少 7,400 億美元。根據追蹤投資的 PitchBook 數據顯示，自 2022 年以來，私募市場投資者已向 Anthropic、OpenAI 和其他人工智能公司投入了 1.1 兆美元。

隨著私募市場支出和投資的成長，公共投資也在增加，加劇了股市對人工智能產業表現的依賴。標普500指數市值排名前十的股票總市值超過1兆美元，其中八家是科技公司。這十家公司合計佔該指數市值的40%以上，而十年前這一比例還不到20%。

Anthropic 公司一旦被納入該指數，很可能取代 Berkshire Hathaway 或 Eli Lilly，這兩家公司是目前市值超過1兆美元的非科技公司中僅有的兩家，從而跌出前十名。

供應鏈服務公司 Circular Technology 的全球研究和市場情報主管 Brad Gastwirth 表示: “這件事意義重大”，“如果情況惡化，將會拖垮整個市場。”

（待續）