Oura’s IPO Delay Signals Broader Market Stall

The IPO market appears to have stalled, which could be a problem for Anthropic. Fitness ring maker Oura’s postponement of its IPO on Tuesday, citing “uncertainty in the IPO market,” followed similar moves by metals producer Amaero last week and Holtec Nuclear Corp. the week before that. Then there’s SB Energy, the SoftBank-controlled power developer for data centers, which made public its IPO paperwork on Sept. 1 (two days before Oura did so) but hasn’t yet begun to market the offering.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going on. In its statement explaining its IPO postponement two weeks ago, Holtec mentioned “headwinds” including rising energy costs, trade tensions, military conflicts and rising interest rates. In short, it’s the world we live in. On top of that, Holtec—which sells to data centers—cited “uncertainty over data center development.”

To be sure, companies with a risky story or overhigh valuation face a particularly tough time going public in a troubled market like this one. Oura, which claimed to be seeing “strong demand” from investors, had proposed a pricing range that implied a valuation arguably twice as high as it should have been. (Bloomberg reported Tuesday the valuation caused some investors to push back.) And as we pointed out on Sunday, Oura reminded some on Wall Street of other single-product hardware firms that had not done well.

SB Energy is in a different situation, one closer to that of Nscale which has also filed to go public. Both have ambitions to become major AI data center operators but are still very early in their development. As we pointed out in this piece, SB Energy doesn’t yet have any data centers in operation. Nscale‘s business isn’t quite as embryonic but as we outlined in this analysis on Tuesday, Nscale has to persuade investors of its ability to raise financing for the data centers it needs to build. A person with knowledge of the situation tells me Nscale is moving forward with the IPO process. While that may be true, I wouldn’t be surprised if we wake up someday soon to see the news that Nscale has decided to postpone.

What does all this mean for Anthropic, which had been expected to go public sometime soon, in hopes of raising close to $100 billion? A choppy market could complicate those aspirations. Moreover, the leak to Reuters on Monday night of Anthropic’s confidential IPO prospectus highlights the risks for the company. Anthropic, according to Reuters, warns in the filing that AI poses “existential risks to humanity.” It also details the financial risks. We already know debt investors are getting more picky about financing data centers and chips, which could complicate the data center build-out so important to Anthropic’s growth. All in all, the question now may be not whether Anthropic delays its IPO, but when.

OpenAI Give New Meaning to Dots

OpenAI responded to Meta Platforms’ Muse personal assistant with its own line of AI assistants—with the unfortunate name of Dots. In a livestreamed presentation, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other staffers outlined how paying ChatGPT users could use Dots to do everything from booking restaurant reservations to helping with detailed work-related processes.

Unfortunately, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has the jump on OpenAI. My colleague Grace Kay tells me AI coding firm Cursor was thinking of using Dot (singular) as the name of its personal assistant before SpaceX acquired Cursor. After that, SpaceX abandoned the Dot name in favor of Grok Bot. But SpaceX doesn’t seem to have given up the name dot.com. If you type that into your web browser, you get directed to a page about Grok Bot. (Dots.com appears to be a clothing site).

Given the acrimonious history between Musk and Altman, don't expect the SpaceX CEO to give up the web address to his foe, OpenAI.

• OpenAI is in early talks with investors to raise $30 billion in a funding round, at a valuation that could be $1.4 trillion, The Information reported. The ChatGPT owner is nearing $70 billion in annualized revenue, The Information also reported.

• Amazon has introduced new AI-powered tools to help marketers buy ad inventory across the vast variety of media it sells, as it attempts to strengthen its position in the ad tech world.

• Anthropic has forged agreements to pay SpaceX up to $84.5 billion to use the rocket and AI company’s Nvidia-based computing capacity through 2029, according to a confidential IPO prospectus reported by Reuters on Tuesday. Those agreements can mostly be canceled with a 90-day notice period, Reuters reported.

• Meta is adapting its AI agent, Muse, for small businesses, adding integrations with workplace software including Salesforce’s Slack, Intuit QuickBooks and Zoom.

• Samsung Electronics and five of its affiliates are investing $1 billion in Helix Digital Infrastructure, an AI infrastructure venture established in June by private equity firm KKR, the companies announced on Tuesday.

• President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that leading AI companies had agreed to non-binding commitments on AI safety provisions, including internal controls on model alignment and external auditing. The “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” which Trump posted on Truth Social, was signed by executives at Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Nvidia.

Today on The Information’s TITV

Check out today’s edition of The Information’s TITV, where we break down why AMD bought World Labs.