‘Handful’ of AI Firms Weighing Stock Market Listings

A New York Stock Exchange executive says multiple artificial intelligence (AI) startups are exploring going public. 

“I’d say that the majority of the companies that are truly pure-play, AI-focused are still mostly financing themselves in the private markets,” Michael Harris, global head of capital markets at the exchange, told the Information’s Private Capital Conference on Tuesday (April 9).

“But we have seen a handful of companies that are at least exploring going through the process,” added Harris, whose comments were reported by Bloomberg News.

Per that report, Harris said most of the startups in the AI space that he’s heard are exploring initial public offerings (IPO) are engaged in enterprise products. He also said these listings may not come this year.

As Bloomberg points out, the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 ushered in a wave of AI startups building generative AI tools, and raising billions of dollars in the process from venture capital outfits and tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. 

The report also notes recent demand for public offerings, particularly from AI-related companies. Reddit, the report said, jumped in price after going public, having sold investors on the way it could benefit from licensing its data to develop AI systems. 

Elsewhere in the AI space, PYMNTS on Wednesday (April 10) explored the way the technology is impacting the organizational structure of nearly every company in the payments industry.

For example, AI helped bring about what was arguably one of Visa’s most high-profile new product launches with Visa Protect, which employs AI to prevent fraud across account-to-account and card-not-present payments.

At American Express, CEO Stephen Squeri devoted part of last month’s shareholder letter to announce a new Generative AI Council that includes technology, data science, risk management, legal and strategy teams to assess and greenlight the deployment of generative AI throughout the company. 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, meanwhile, recently announced an as-yet-unnamed chief data and analytics officer.

“All these moves reflect the dramatic impact AI has had on the payments industry,” PYMNTS wrote. “Couple AI’s emergence with recent interchange reductions, and you have a pressing need to move data monetization to near the top of the agenda. And given the state of executive decisioning around AI as measured late last year, it’s happening right on time.”