Gulf wealth funds poised to profit from Anthropic, SpaceX IPOs

Gulf sovereign funds stand to reap windfalls from their early investments in Anthropic and SpaceX, as the world’s biggest AI companies race towards Wall Street debuts this year.

Anthropic filed draft paperwork for a public listing on Monday after raising $65 billion via a funding round last week that included Abu Dhabi-based MGX, which already has stakes in Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, owner of xAI. Now estimated to be worth $965 billion, Anthropic has leapfrogged ChatGPT maker OpenAI in valuation and may beat it to the open market. 

Meanwhile, the combined 0.63% stake in SpaceX owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding and his private office could be worth as much as $10.5 billion when the rocket maker goes public at an estimated value of $1.75 trillion, Asharq Business reports.

Alwaleed’s businesses were jointly the second-largest investors in Twitter when Musk acquired the social network in 2022 and rebranded it as “X.” The stakes were converted to SpaceX shares when it took control of xAI in February this year.

Shares in Kingdom Holding, which is listed on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul exchange, have risen more than 40% since last Tuesday in anticipation of a boost from the SpaceX IPO.