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Anthropic wins support as much on its own merits as from scepticism surrounding its number one competitor
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1 in 6 retail investors shunned SpaceX IPO on account of their negative view of Elon Musk
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The greater a retail investor’s confidence in their investment ability, the less likely they are to back an AI giant
As speculation mounts over potential IPOs of AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI, a poll of UK retail investors by Boring Money shows a clear preference for Anthropic over its biggest frontier AI competitor. If given the opportunity to buy shares in an IPO of Anthropic, 48% of UK retail investors said that they would participate. Almost 50% fewer (28%) would invest in an OpenAI floatation.
Retail investors’ interest in Anthropic is also significantly higher than their actual investment in SpaceX, whose IPO was signalled as a benchmark for retail investor appetite for AI stocks. When polled, just 26% of retail investors had already bought SpaceX shares on the secondary market, suggesting appetite for Anthropic is running significantly ahead of actual participation in the only frontier AI IPO to have taken place so far.
Why Anthropic wins
Anthropic’s lead over OpenAI appears to be driven as much by product familiarity as by brand recognition. The top reasons to back Anthropic were its position as “the AI leader” (25%) and investors’ established use of Anthropic’s tools and their experience of using them (23%).
SpaceX faces valuation and Musk concerns
Part of Anthropic’s advantage also appears to lie in the absence of the baggage that surrounds some rival private companies.
SpaceX, the first of the AI agents to go public, faced significant scepticism from respondents. Three-quarters (74%) said they had chosen not to invest in the company. Asked why, roughly a quarter described SpaceX as overpriced, with many arguing that its valuation had been inflated by other investors’ fear of missing out (FOMO).
Elon Musk also emerged as a significant deterrent, with around one in six (17%) retail investors who shunned the SpaceX IPO citing him directly as a reason for staying away.
While valuation concerns remain a feature of the debate around all high-profile private companies, the personal objections associated with Musk were largely absent from responses about OpenAI, leaving investors focused instead on company prospects, products and pricing.
The most confident investors are the least likely to participate
The poll also reveals how the greater a retail investor’s confidence in their own investment ability, the less likely they are to back one of the AI giants.
Just 17% of the most confident investors said they would buy SpaceX, compared with 35% of those in the high-confidence group. Interest in Anthropic also dropped from 59% among high-confidence investors to 33% among the very confident.
Founder and CEO of Boring Money, Holly Mackay, comments: “The consensus reader views are interesting. Momentum and hype can drive markets as much as economics, and if our readers’ views on Anthropic reflect broader investor views, then this IPO will be one to watch.
One of our readers likened the current state of play to the dot-com bubble. But 1999 was a little different – many of the companies riding that dot-com wave didn’t make decent revenues, let alone profits. And if I think about how my search activity has changed even over the last 6 months, the impact these players make on our lives is massive. We typically overestimate the short-term potential and under-estimate the long-term potential of these structural shifts in behavior.
IPOs don’t happen in a vacuum and our August data revealed a decline in investor confidence. With geopolitical tension and economies under pressure from inflation, the climate is very challenging. However the reported brand affinity with Claude and inevitable investor FOMO around an Anthropic IPO will likely make it a hugely popular event with Britain’s growing ‘army’ of more than 14 million USNewsRanks.
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