Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan anticipates a significant wave of initial public offerings from artificial intelligence-focused companies.
His comments come as several major players, including Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX), Anthropic, and OpenAI, are approaching landmark listings.
Razer (01337) disclosed in February of this year that it has invested over $6 billion in AI technology research and development.
Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan stated on Thursday that a major wave of global AI IPOs could become a sustained industry norm, as several heavyweight AI companies stand on the cusp of highly anticipated market debuts.
Discussing the successive IPO applications from tech giants like Space Exploration Technologies, Anthropic, and OpenAI, Tan told CNBC's Joanna Ossinger at the SuperAI conference in Singapore, "It's exciting to see a lot of these companies going public, but this is just the beginning."
He added, "We're going to see a second generation, a third generation, and wave after wave of these companies going public."
Tan made these remarks a day before Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies was set to begin trading publicly. Its xAI unit, which operates social platform X and Musk's proprietary Grok large language model, is targeting a record IPO valuation of $1.77 trillion.
OpenAI filed its IPO prospectus on Monday afternoon US time; its rival Anthropic submitted its application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission a week earlier.
Anthropic completed its Series H funding round on May 28, achieving a post-money valuation of $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI's $852 billion valuation from March this year.
While multiple AI firms are now rushing to list on Wall Street amid unprecedented market fervor, Razer itself delisted from the Hong Kong exchange in April 2022, ending a five-year public tenure. Tan stated the delisting was to allow the company to focus resources on deepening its AI research and development.
In the privatization deal, a consortium led by co-founder Min-Liang Tan and Hong Kong private equity firm CVC Capital offered up to HK$107.9 billion (approximately US$13.8 billion) to acquire all publicly held shares at HK$2.82 per share. Razer had listed on the Hong Kong exchange in 2017 at an issue price of HK$3.88 per share.
The company announced in February this year that it had cumulatively invested over $6 billion in AI R&D and had launched several AI wearable devices targeted at its core gaming user base.
At the SuperAI conference, Tan highlighted the company's Motoko AI smart headset project, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. The device offers users features like real-time translation, cooking tutorials, and equipment repair guidance.
Other AI hardware products from Razer include workstations built for intensive AI computing and the Ava desktop smart assistant.
"We are going all in on AI," Tan said. He also revealed the company is exploring how to give AI near-human personality and emotional expression capabilities.
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